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THE ANCIENT
GIANTS
WHO RULED
AMERICA
The Missing Skeletons and
the Great Smithsonian Cover-Up
Richard |. Dewhurst
Bear & Company
Rochester, Vermont • Toronto, Canada
THE ANCIENT
GIANTS
WHO RULED
AMERICA
“This is the most comprehensive and level approach to the subject
of giant humanoids in Earth’s past to have ever been published.
The most appealing aspect is that Dewhurst has collected a vast
array of primary sources and presents them here. Reading one
newspaper discovery after another of giant skeletons and artifacts is
perhaps the most compelling reason to question the standard lines
we are given about humanity’s origins. When coupled with his
persuasive theories explaining why the Smithsonian would actively
cover up such discoveries, you have one valuable and entertaining
read! Highly recommended.”
Robert R. Hieronimus, Ph.D., author of Founding Fathers,
Secret Societies and host of 21st Century Radio
“Giants in ancient America? You bet! It’s all here in Richard
Dewhurst’s fabulous book. Extensively illustrated and chronicled
with firsthand accounts from early 19th- and 20th-century news
clippings, this book will shatter the mainstream academic teachings
that continue to ignore and cover up the role giants played in early
American history.”
Xaviant Haze, author of Aliens in Ancient Egypt and coauthor of
The Suppressed History of America
“At last, a comprehensive sourcebook that demystifies the giants of
ancient America. Lavishly illustrated, this goliath and gutsy book
delivers an unprecedented wealth of information on the great
mound builders. Dewhurst digs deeper than the rest. Don’t miss it.”
Susan B. Martinez, Ph.D., author of Lost History of the Little
People and The Mysterious Origins of Hybrid Man
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Giant gratitude to my wife, Maxine, and son, Charles, for their
continued love and support, without which this book would have been
impossible. Giant bro’ love to Doug Grant, Ben Edmonds, Tom
McGowan, Jay Kriss, Derek Crockett, Bruce Marshall, and Ehud
Sperling, president of Inner Traditions, for their friendship and
inspiration along life’s often perilous and bizarre journey. Giant respect
to all the wonderful people at Inner Traditions who made this book
possible: Jon Graham, for his great eye and greater mind; Mindy
Branstetter, for her admirable patience and meticulous editing; Jeanie
Levitan, for her wise guidance; Nancy Yeilding, for shaping the
manuscript into its final form; and Cyndi Marcotte, for keeping it all
together. And finally, giant thanks to the Quarry Hill community for
providing me with shelter from the storm.
The eyes of that species of extinct Giants, whose bones fill the
mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now.
Abraham Lincoln, 1848
CONTENTS
Cover Imag e
Title Page
Epigraph
Acknowledgments
Preface: On Being Tall and My Fascination with Giants
Introduction: Uncovering the Real History of America
Part I
FINDINGS ON ANCIENT AMERICAN GIANTS
Chapter 1: How Big Were They?
THE BONES TELL THE TALE
THE BIG WHOPPER: EIGHTEEN FEET AND COUNTING?
GIANT BURIED WITH A PANTHER
THE GIANTS OF CONNEAUT
GIANTS FOUND IN GEORGIA
SACRED POOLS. SECRET CAVES- AND THE HALLS OF THE
MOUNTAIN KINGS
ON THE TENNESSEE GIANTS
THE HIDDEN ROOMS FILLED WITH GIANTS
SQUARE WALLS ENCLOSE SPRING. MORE GIANTS
ROLL AWAY THE STONE—MORE SECRET CAVE ROOMS
A NINE-FOOT GIANT BURIED NEXT TO A FAIR-SKINNED
INFANT GIRL
“GIANT ON THE BEACH” IN TEXAS
THE SMITHSONIAN AND THE DR. HRDLICKA CONNECTION
SMITHSONIAN SAYS THE SKULL SIZE OF ARIZONA GIANT IS
“BEYOND COMPREHENSION”
FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA
Chapter 2: North America
Land of the Giants
THE LENNI LENAPE GIANTS OF THE EASTERN UNITED
STATES
MANY WONDERFUL THINGS ARE TOLD OF THIS FAMOUS
PEOPLE
THE MENGWE JOIN IN THE WAR
AMAZING FINDS FROM EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY
OHIO STATE GETS IN THE ACT
MASS GIANT BURIAL EVIDENCE OF BLOODY BATTLE
COPPER-HELMETED GIANTS RULE
EXCAVATIONS AT ILLINOIS SITES IN 1891
CHICAGO TRIBUNE IN 1892 CONFIRMS RACE OF GIANTS
THE LARGEST NEOLITHIC BURIAL SITE IN THE WORLD—
THE DICKSON MOUNDS MUSEUM (ILLINOIS')
SMITHSONIAN INVOLVEMENT IN THE DISAPPEARANCE OF
GIANT SKELETONS FOUND IN WISCONSIN INDIAN
MOUNDS
DOCUMENTED DOUBLE DENTITIONS FROM IOWA
GIANTS IN MIDDLE AMERICA
THE DEATH VALLEY TEMPLE OF THE GIANTS
Chapter 3: How Old?
Clues from Mastodons and Carbon Dating
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SITES IN THE COUNTRY
SMITHSONIAN INVOLVEMENT IN THE 1880S AND 1890S
SIGNIFICANT FINDS AT THE MEADOWCROFT
ROCKSHELTER
THUNDERBIRD IMAGES DATE BACK TEN THOUSAND YEARS
THE DISCOVERY OF THE FAMOUS ELEPHANT PIPE
Chapter 4: Copper-Crowned Kings and Pearl-Bedecked
Queens
THE SMITHSONIAN LEADS GEORGIA GIANT SEARCH
THE INCREDIBLE PEARLS OF OHIO’S ROYAL GIANTS
GIANT KING’S MOUTH STUFFED WITH IMMENSE PEARLS
CHARLESTON. WEST VIRGINIA—HOME TO GIANTS. ANCIENT
KINGS. AND HIGH PRIESTS
GRAVE CREE.K MOUND. WEST VIRGINIA
KING CONEHEAD IS DISCOVERED
MOUND BUILDERS HAD PECULIAR HEADS
Part II
SOPHISTICATED CULTURES OF THE ANCIENT GIANTS
Chapter 5: Pyramids and Pictorial Mounds
THE GREAT PYRAMID MOUNDS OF ILLINOIS
MONKS MOUND
MYSTERIOUS MOUND 72
CIRCULAR WOODEN SUN CALENDARS CALLED
“WOODHENGE”
ONLY FORTY OUT OF 120 MOUNDS SURVIVE AT CAHOKIA
ATTEMPTS TO SAVE THE MOUNDS
PLEA TO SAVE THE MOUNDS
CEREMONIAL COPPER-HELMETED AND ARMORED MEN
ON THE CASE OF THE SEVENTY DESTROYED MOUNDS
HUNDREDS OF MISSING SKELETONS
NO RECORDED SKELETON FINDS FROM MAIN CAHOKIA
MOUND?
MYSTERIOUS EFFIGY MOUNDS FOUND IN MANY PLACES
THE BIG FIND IN WISCONSIN
NO TRADITION FOR THE MOUNDS AMONG THE SIOUX
MOST NORTHWESTERN SITE OF THE MOUND BUILDERS
SUPERIOR QUALITY OF WORKMANSHIP
EVIDENCE FOR THE WISCONSIN MAMMOTH
MAMMOTH-SHAPED MOUND IN MINNESOTA
PANTHERS AND ALTARS
EVIDENCE OF DAMS
Chapter 6: Cities in Circles and Lines
THE POVERTY POINT INDUSTRIAL METROPOLIS
LOST CITY IN ONTARIO
THE WHEATF1ELD MOUND OF PENNSYLVANIA. FIRST
DESCRIBED IN 1806
CIRCULAR VILLAGES AMID THE TREES
THE GIANTS CLEARED THE FOREST
SKELETON AND HOUSE FOUND AMONG THE SOYBEANS
AN UNUSUAL SQUARE MOUND IS DESCRIBED
THE ANCIENT ROADS LINE UP WITH THE GATEWAYS
THE CADDO
CLIFF DWELLERS
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
Chapter 7: A Copper Kingdom and Mica Mines
ISLE ROY ALE—THE ROYAL COPPER MOUND CONNECTION
SURFACE EXPLORING COPPER MINERS
KNOWLEDGE OF ANNEALING AND EMBOSSING
GERMAN BOOK FROM 1857 TALKS OF THE ANCIENT MINERS
“ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL ARCHAEOLOGICAL
EXCAVATIONS EVER MADE IN WISCONSIN”
MICA AND THE MOUND BUILDERS
A DETAILED INVENTORY OF GRAVE GOODS
Chapter 8: Treasures of Giant Burial Grounds
EARLY EASTERN OUTPOST FOR THE MOUND BUILDERS
RICH BURIALS AT SUGAR RUN ATTRACT SMITHSONIAN
MATERIAL TO BE CATALOGUED AND PLACED IN
SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM
1880 HISTORY OF INDIANA COUNTY REVEALS INDIAN LORE
SEVENTEEN BURIALS UNCOVERED
THE MISSING GIANTS IN NORTH CAROLINA
THE MANY MOUNDS OF TENNESSEE
Part III
PRE-COLUMBIAN FOREIGN CONTACT
Chapter 9: Holy Stones, a Calendar Stele, and Foreign
Coins
GEORGE S. MCDOWELL REVEALS HIEROGLYPHIC TABLETS
IN THE POSSESSION OF THE CINCINNATI SOCIETY OF
NATURAL HISTORY
HIEROGLYPHICS ALSO FOUND IN MARIETTA
HOLY STONES IN OHIO AND ILLINOIS?
HUNTERS FIND STONE TABLETS UNDER A TREE
THE DAVENPORT STELE
HIEROGLYPHIC TABLETS IN MICHIGAN AND KENTUCKY
ANCIENT COINS FOUND IN AMERICA
A HALF-SILVER-DOLLAR-SIZED SCENE OF HOUND AND DEER
ROMAN COINS FOUND AT THE OHIO FALLS
Chapter 10: Extremely Ancient Red-Haired Mummies
GIANT MUMMIES OF SPIRIT CAVE
THE SPIRIT CAVE MAN AT THE MIDDLE OF ALL THE
CONTROVERSY
THE ANCIENT RED-HAIRED GIANTS OF LOVELOCK. NEVADA
THE LEGEND OF THE SI-TE-CAH
THE FLORIDA BOG MUMMIES
THE LOST' KINGDOM OF THE RED-HAIRED. BLUE-EYED
INDIANS
THE MANDANS AND REPORTS OF RED-HAIRED. BLUE-EYED
INDIANS—LEWIS AND CLARK JOURNALS
Chapter 11; Megalithic Catalina
The Blond-Haired Children of the Nine-Feet-Tall Kings
REWRITING THE HISTORY OF THE WHITE RACE
Chapter 12: Insights into Origins
THE SCYTHIAN CONNECTION
MOUND BUILT PRECISELY TO THE CARDINAL POINTS
THE MOUNDS REPRESENT THE PLEIADES
SIGNS OF HUMAN SACRIFICE
BLOND-HAIRED SKELETON BURIED IN CAVE
SECRET ROOM IN A CAVE IS DISCOVERED
THE WELL SHOWS SIGNS OF ENGINEERING
A STANDING STONE MARKS A BURIAL
EVIDENCE FOR GREAT ANTIQUITY
EVIDENCE OF IVORY WORK AND FINE DRILLS
MADE OF THE FINEST AND BEST QUALITY IVORY
A PROPOSED CONNECTION WITH THE HINDU RELIGION
INDIANS OF CAROLINA KNEW THE WORLD WAS ROUND
Conclusion
Footnotes
Bibliography
About the Author
About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company
Books of Related Interest
Copyright & Permissions
Index
PREFACE
On Being Tall and My Fascination
with Giants
I discovered that I was going to be tall one fateful year between the
seventh and eighth grades when I grew eight inches. My unnatural
growth spurt so alarmed my mother that she set up an appointment with
our family physician to see if there was “something wrong with me.”
Needless to say, I found all this extremely upsetting. The thought that
there was something wrong with me had never occurred to me before,
and the prospect of suddenly looming over my once “peer-friendly”
classmates was also deeply unsettling.
Before my growth spurt, my best friend was Phil Whitcomb, who
was shorter than me, but no one ever commented on it. After my
growth spurt, we were immediately dubbed Mutt and Jeff. Phil hated
being called Mutt in my presence, and it eventually led to a cooling of
our lifelong friendship. From this I learned that being tall has its
consequences, and being called a freak was one of them.
Another component of being tall was an immediate interest in giant
stories. Thus the kernel for this book was born. Over the years, I took
an immediate interest in various reports of giants, and when they were
referenced in a newspaper account, I always gave them more credence.
The only problem was that every time I tried to chase such articles
down to their full-length, original newspaper nubs, I mostly came up
with a shortened blurb or nothing at all.
In order to finally get to the bottom of the mystery of the giants, I
subscribed to several online newspaper archive services that covered
over four hundred years of newspaper accounts from the United States.
I then tried to search out the cross-referenced articles I had compiled
over the years. When I was able to specifically search with date and
publication, I got results, but on average I only found about 25 percent
of the articles I was searching for. Lacking dates and publications, how
was I going to crack this thing?
1
Then one day, out of sheer frustration, I put on my old Miami Herald
editor’s hat and began thinking about how a typical sensationalistic
newspaper headline would read. My reasoning was that if dates
couldn’t crack it, then word search could. My first headline search was
for “Giant Skeletons Unearthed.” No dates, no publications, just pure
sensationalism and the hope that the word search would come up with
something. Almost immediately the search engine spit back more than
thirty hits, and I was off to the races. More headlines were fed in:
“Amazing Giants,” “Giant Skulls Found,” “Secret Cave Reveals
Startling Discovery,” “Smithsonian Discovers Giant Skeletons,” and so
on. Within a month I had archived several hundred articles on various
giant finds across the entire country. What I found changed my
thinking about myth and history forever.
I sincerely hope that reading this book will change your thinking as
much as it did mine.
2
INTRODUCTION
Uncovering the Real History of
America
Writing this book has been the most exciting voyage of discovery I
have ever taken. What started as a somewhat idle inquiry into clouded
reports of giants—in and of itself not that groundbreaking—ended with
my having to rethink everything I ever learned in school. After all,
we’ve all heard of giants before. What we have not heard is that these
people were as real as you and me.
But the most important thing about this book for me was not
discovering that giants were real, although in these pages we will most
definitely see the historical evidence of that fact. What really surprised
me was discovering something very much more shocking: the truth
about the early history of America and the people who lived here.
Long before the so-called “discovery of America,” this land was
populated by very ancient peoples, some of whom were of enormous
size, as attested to by the numerous reports of giant finds, a sampling of
which is presented in the first two chapters. Those reports make it clear
that in the nineteenth century such finds were common knowledge
around the country. When carbon dating became available in the
twentieth century, earlier estimates of the age of the remains were
increased by many magnitudes: with ranges from five thousand to
fourteen thousand years! I examine the reports of these extraordinary
results in chapter 3, in addition to finds linking some of those early,
magnificent humans with mastodons (which became extinct some
twenty thousand years ago). Not surprisingly, many finds indicate that
the giants were royal beings, as the reports of copper crowns and pearl
robes in chapter 4 make clear.
While certain monuments and parks in various parts of the country
offer silent testimony to the creative efforts of these early peoples, few
of us are aware of the true scope of the mounds and cities that once
3
revealed advanced ancient civilizations. In chapter 5 we take a closer
look at studies and reports about pyramids and pictorial mounds, while
in chapter 6 we learn of discoveries of once-thriving cities most of us
have never heard of.
When we learn of the importance of the copper mines in upper
Michigan at Isle Royale and the mica mines of North Carolina, reported
on in chapter 7, we must necessarily take a deep breath and think. What
are the mines telling us? They are telling us that as early as 10,000
BCE, Americans were mining mica for ornaments as well as mining
and refining copper into weapons, jewelry, and exquisite grave goods.
Along with the “buried treasures” spoken of in chapter 8 and later
chapters, reports and studies of the mines make it clear that this land
was home to very ancient, fully developed, sophisticated cultures
capable of fine weaving, mummification, beautiful artworks, and even
duck decoys so expertly crafted you’d think a New England decoy
maker had made them in his workshop today.
Discrepancies between the amount of copper estimated to have been
mined and findings of copper in the country hint at worldwide trade in
those very ancient times. In fact, a long history of pre-Columbian
European and Asian contact is evidenced all over the continent, as seen
in artifacts like the Roman coins and engraved tablets examined in
reports in chapter 9 or the existence of red-haired, blue-eyed Mandans
of North Dakota or the nine-thousand-year-old Caucasian mummies of
Spirit Cave in Nevada, reported on in chapter 10. Some still argue that
there was no European contact; even when confronted with the
evidence of the Florida bog mummies—hundreds of red-haired corpses
so perfectly preserved that their hair and brain tissue can be seen and
tested—they still refuse to give up the old historical canards. The
reports given in chapter 10 give rise to questions about whether these
were the red-haired ancestors of the later Europeans and not the other
way around. Added to this are the startling reports of finds of seven-
thousand-year-old skeletons of a race of blond-haired giants along with
the remains of a megalithic “Stonehenge-era” temple on Catalina Island
in California given in chapter 11. The suggestions about possible far-
flung genetic and cultural connections shared in chapter 12 provide
fascinating material for musing on, offering insights regarding very
ancient travel and cultures, north and south, east and west. Only true
4
historical inquiry, unclouded by prejudice, will eventually tell us the
answer.
But what we have instead is a perfect storm of wrong-headed
thinking in order to protect current scientific theory. And central to the
promotion of wrong-headed thinking has been the Smithsonian
Institution, an institution originally intended to “increase the diffusion
of knowledge among men.” Although scant official papers exist to
attest to its purpose beyond that statement, its true mission to unearth
the real history of America is evidenced by its first commissioned and
published book. Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, written
in 1848 by Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis. This lavishly
illustrated work is an invaluable and open-minded study of the huge
number of earthworks found along the Mississippi River.
But something happened after that promising beginning. What my
research has revealed is that the Smithsonian has been at the center of a
vast cover-up of America’s true history since the 1880s. The
Smithsonian was originally founded in 1829 with a $500,000 grant
from the British mineralogist James Smithson, who never visited the
United States, died without heirs, and was buried in Genoa, Italy. A
sign of the Smithsonian’s utter disregard for history is that Smithson’s
body was reburied at the Smithsonian Castle in the twentieth century in
a sarcophagus that lists his age at death as seventy-five, when it is
common knowledge that he was closer to sixty-five when he died.
5
AVCIEXT WORKS MAlItTTA, IHID .
Fig. 1.1. This Library of Congress image was used as the frontispiece for the
150th-anniversary reissue of Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley by
Squier and Davis.
After the Civil War the Smithsonian began to adopt a policy of
excluding any evidence of direct foreign influence in the Americas
prior to Columbus. Some have argued that it was an attempt by the
fractured post-Civil War government to downplay any regional and
ethnic conflicts in the still fragile national rebuilding after the war.
Others have pointed to the expansionist policies incorporated in the
doctrine of manifest destiny and the desire to obscure the origins of the
tribes being displaced and annihilated by westward expansion. Still
others have alleged that it was a direct religious policy adapted to
counter the growing problem with the Mormon religion and its
assertions that the lost tribes of Israel were to be found in America.
All of these policies can be directly traced to Major John Wesley
Powell and his tenure at the Smithsonian from 1879 to 1902. Powell
was a geologist and explorer who led expeditions and conducted
surveys of the American West. In 1869 he set out by boat to explore the
Colorado River from the Green River, Wyoming Territory to the foot
of the Grand Canyon.
6
When Congress created the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879 Powell was
named its first director, a post he held until his death in 1902. Placed
under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, the bureau, whose
name was changed to the Bureau of American Ethnology, was to be the
repository of the archives, records, and material relating to the Indians
of North America. Because of his experience as a Western explorer,
Powell was considered an expert on the geography of the American
West, and he was asked to write a report on the history of the ancient
tribes and their probable origins, which was to become the official
policy of the Smithsonian for the next hundred-plus years.
The title of Powell’s first report to the secretary of the Smithsonian
in 1879, “On Limitations to the Use of Some Anthropologic Data,” is
revealing and shows the ulterior policy at work within the nascent
institution. The following is taken from that report.
Investigations in this department are of great interest, and have
attracted to the field a host of workers; but a general review of the
mass of published matter exhibits the fact that the uses to which
the material has been put have not always been wise.
In the monuments of antiquity found throughout North America,
in camp and village sites, graves, mounds, ruins, and scattered
works of art, the origin and development of art in savage and
barbaric life may be satisfactorily studied. Incidentally, too, hints
of customs may be discovered, but outside of this, the discoveries
made have often been illegitimately used, especially for the
purpose of connecting the tribes of North America with peoples of
so-called races of antiquity in other portions of the world. A brief
review of some conclusions that must be accepted in the present
status of the science will exhibit the futility of these attempts. 1 -
In the study of these antiquities, there has been much
unnecessary speculation in respect to the relation existing between
the people to whose existence they attest, and the tribes of Indians
inhabiting the country during the historic period. It may be said
that in the Pueblos discovered in the southwestern portion of the
United States and farther south through Mexico and perhaps into
Central America tribes are known having a culture quite as far
advanced as any exhibited in the discovered ruins. In this respect.
7
then, there is no need to search for extra-limital origin through lost
tribes for any art there exhibited. With regard to the mounds so
widely scattered between the two oceans, it may also be said that
mound-building tribes were known in the early history of
discovery of this continent, and that the vestiges of art discovered
do not excel in any respect the arts of the Indian tribes known to
history. There is, therefore, no reason for us to search for an extra-
limital origin through lost tribes for the arts discovered in the
mounds of North America.
8
•ffH !«<*»*%
Fig. 1.2. This map of Serpent Mound is one of many in Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley that were surveyed and sketched by Squier and Davis.
9
Fig. 1.3. The Kincaid Site, a Mississippian settlement in southern Illinois (courtesy
of Herb Roe)
Foremost among the wrong-headed theories Powell championed is
evolution. We are shown charts of man becoming bipedal and each
“new” man being bigger and smarter than the last. This is in direct
contradiction to the charts we use for every other animal we study. We
have only to look at a bird and be told that it was once a dinosaur to
know how false this paradigm of man’s growth is. Look at the
evolution of most animals, and the record says they got smaller over
time, not bigger. However, with all the modern edifices of education
built on the theory of evolution and the growing stature of humanity,
we can’t very well have the Smithsonian running around telling people
that we have degenerated from an ancient race of giants who once ruled
America, now can we?
The second theory current at the time was called uniform gradual
history, a benign theory that says Earth goes along for huge spans of
time with no catastrophes. The opposite of this theory is the more
modern school of thought called catastrophism, based on the provable
fact that disasters happen frequently and often. The record here in
America speaks clearly on the subject. It relates not only to the
disappearance of the Western inland civilizations dating back before
5000 BCE, which were wiped out by volcanoes, but also to the sudden
cessation of the copper trade around 1500 BCE. Why is this
10
significant? Because Cretan culture was wiped out in a series of
catastrophes brought on by the massive explosion of the Santorini
volcano on one of the Cretan Empire’s islands. I do not think it a
coincidence that in 1500 BCE the volcano wiped out the Cretan Empire
(the Exodus in Egypt factors into this as well), and shut down the
copper trade in America for almost two thousand years.
The third major contributing factor to the extant historical myopia is
the land bridge theory, which states that all the Indian tribes reached
America from Asia across the Alaskan land bridge. The man who came
up with this absurd and unprovable theory is none other than Dr. Ales
Hrdlicka, the first curator (in 1903) of physical anthropology of the
U.S. National Museum, now the Smithsonian Institution National
Museum of Natural History. No boats for him. They walked—even
though we know they would have had to walk around or through the
extensive glaciers still blocking Canada. Were they not capable of
slowly sailing from one island to another, as we know the Polynesians
and Australians did for forty thousand years? The theory is absurd, but
the Smithsonian told us to believe it, and we did. When academics get
caught in such a perfect storm of wrong theories, they have a very hard
time wriggling out of it. Reputations and careers are at stake. Books
have been written and published and promotions garnered on the
weight of their verity, so the fix was in from the beginning, so to speak.
Fig. 1.4. The Nodena Site, possibly in the Province of Pacaha, encountered by
Hernando de Soto (courtesy of Herbert Roe)
11
Then there is the thorny question of racism and manifest destiny
(which, decoded, reads like this: America is inhabited by inferior races
of people whom “civilized man” has a God-given right to exterminate
so that he can exploit the country he now considers his domain). One
has only to read Powell’s 1879 theories about the aborigines and their
inherent lack of intelligence to get an unpleasant whiff of what we are
dealing with here. Powell finishes his “proof ” of no European or
Asiatic influences by boldly asserting, without a shred of supporting
evidence, that all pictographic writing found anywhere in the Americas
is evidence of nothing more than the most rudimentary picture making,
despite having no working knowledge of any of the ancient writing
systems to which he alludes. He continues in his report to explain:
Many of these pictographs are simply pictures, rude etchings, or
paintings delineating natural objects, especially animals, and
illustrate simply the beginning of pictorial art; others we know
were intended to commemorate events or to represent other ideas
entertained by their authors; but to a large extent these were simply
mnemonic—not conveying ideas of themselves, but designed more
thoroughly to retain in memory certain events or thoughts by
persons who were already cognizant of the same through current
hearsay or tradition. If once the memory of the thought to be
preserved has passed from the minds of men, the record is
powerless to restore its own subject-matter to the understanding.
The great body of picture-writings is thus described; yet to some
slight extent pictographs are found with characters more or less
conventional, and the number of such is quite large in Mexico and
Central America. Yet even these conventional characters are used
with others less conventional in such a manner that perfect records
were never made. Hence it will be seen that it is illegitimate to use
any pictographic matter of a date anterior to the discovery of the
continent by Columbus for historic purposes.
When you step back for a moment from the pseudo-scientific
double-talk, what he is saying is this: these are essentially dumb
savages with the minds of children. Other pictures and trinkets that we
have found that hint at intelligence, language, or higher knowledge are
simply the scribbling of children trying to leave a garbled record of
12
their childish view of history and religion.
It is bad enough that these biased and unsupported claims were the
policy of the Smithsonian in the nineteenth century, but to make
matters worse, Charles Doolittle Walcott, secretary (chief executive
officer) of the Smithsonian from 1907 to 1927, made the “Powell
Doctrine” the official dogma of the museum for the entire twentieth
century as well. In fact, the Powell Doctrine is still the official policy of
the Smithsonian as of this writing, despite the fact that some scholars
associated with the museum are finally starting to speak out in support
of evidence of early European settlement of the Americas.
Fig. 1.5. Major Paleo-lndian sites in North America
The great crime and tragedy of this policy is hard to compute. One
glaring result has been the suppression of hundreds of “out-of-context”
finds, all submitted to the museum in naive ignorance of the museum’s
official policy of suppression of alternative perspectives. To compound
the problem, all major universities in the United States also adopted
this policy in conjunction with the official position of the Smithsonian,
thus making it impossible to study alternative American history and
receive any grants or funding for pursuits of this nature. A giant
problem for the giants and a giant problem for history.
It is the express intent of this book to bring to light the many
discoveries about the ancient history of this land that have all but
13
disappeared from public awareness over the last hundred years.
14
ONE
Findings on Ancient American Giants
15
1
HOW BIG WERE THEY?
What makes us call a person a giant? Here are some ways to place the
term in context:
• Typically, the height of Americans today ranges between five feet,
four inches, and five feet, ten inches (National Health Statistics
Report No. 10, October 22, 2008).
• Only twenty players in National Basketball Association history
have exceeded a listed height of seven feet, three inches, with only
a few reaching as tall as seven feet, seven inches. Some, but not
all, of the tallest players have the condition known as gigantism or
giantism, a condition usually caused by a tumor on the pituitary
gland of the brain. These terms are typically applied to those
whose height is not just in the upper 1 percent of the population
but also several standard deviations above the mean for people of
the same sex, age, and ethnic ancestry.
• The tallest person in recorded history was Robert Pershing
Wadlow (February 22, 1918-July 15, 1940). He was sometimes
called the Alton Giant or the Giant of Illinois because that’s where
he was born and raised. His height was eight feet, eleven inches,
and he weighed 490 pounds at his time of death.
16
Fig. 1.1. Robert Wadlow (right) pictured here with his father, Harold Wadlow (left),
who was five feet, eleven inches tall (www.sciencekids.co.nz ’).
With these facts in mind, let’s review a sampling of the many reports
of finds of very-tall human remains on this continent.
THE BONES TELL THE TALE
Extremely ancient human remains have been found throughout New
York State and New England that date back to at least 9000 BCE. A
report from the Syracuse Herald American in 1983 said that
anthropologists from the Buffalo Museum of Science dug up 1,400
artifacts from a site called Phoenix Hilltop. The following county
historical report published in 1824 reported that in 1811 “rude medals,
a pipe and other articles” were uncovered at an Indian mound on Mount
Morris in New York State, in association with the remains of a giant
“of enormous size.”
17
A History of Livingston County, New York, 1824
When Jesse Stanley came to Mount Morris in 1811 an Indian
Mound nearly 100 feet in diameter and from 8 to 10 feet high
covered the site of the late General Mills’ residence. The mound
had long been crowned by a great tree, which had recently fallen
under the axe. Deacon Stanley was told that when freshly cut, it
disclosed 130 concentric circles or yearly growths.
About the year 1820, the mound was removed, and in its removal
arrowheads, a brass kettle, and knives were thrown out. A number
of skeletons were also disinterred. Among the bones was a human
skeleton of enormous size, the jawbone of which was so large that
Adam Holslander placed it, mask-like, over his own chin and jaw.
He was the largest man in the settlement, and his face was in
proportion to the rest of his body.
Metal in the form of rude medals, a pipe and other articles were
picked out of the earth thrown from the excavation.
A History of Western New York, 1804
Human bones of gigantic proportion were discovered in such a
state of preservation as to be accurately described and measured.
The cavities of the skulls were large enough in their dimensions to
receive the entire head of a man of modern times, and could be put
on one’s head with as much ease as a hat or cap. The jawbones
were sufficiently large to admit to being placed so as to match or
fit outside of a modern man’s face. The other bones so far
discovered appear to be of equal proportions with the skulls and
jawbones, several of which have been preserved in the cabinets of
antiquarians, where they still may be seen.
NEW HAMPSHIRE GIANT NINE FEET TALL
_ PORTSMOUTH HERALD, AUGUST 17, 1899 _
Relics of a prehistoric age have been brought to light in Noble County.
The find is in York Township where workmen excavating for a public
highway found the skeleton of an inhabitant of early days.
The bones indicate that the person was fully nine feet tall.
The bones are unusually large and the position of the skeleton when
18
found indicated that the person had been buried in a sitting position.
The belief is advanced that the remains are those of a mound builder.
History of the Town of Rockingham, Vermont, 1907
When the earth was removed from the top of the ledges east of the
falls a remarkable human skeleton, unmistakably that of an Indian,
was found. Those who saw it tell the writer the jaw bone was of
such size that a large man could easily slip it over his face and the
teeth, which were all double, were perfect. . . . This skeleton was
kept for many years deposited in the attic of a small building on
the north side of the Square. This building was then occupied by
Dr. John H. Wells’ office and drug store and stood where the
Italian fruit store now does. When the building was rebuilt a
decade ago or more the bones disappeared.
BONES OF GIANT INDIANS FOUND IN
MARYLAND
PREHISTORIC MEN SEVEN FEET TALL WHO ONCE LIVED IN
WHAT IS MARYLAND
_ BALTIMORE AMERICAN, NOVEMBER 15, 1897 _
There has just been received at the Maryland Academy of Sciences, the
skeleton of an Indian seven feet tall. It was discovered near Antietam.
There are now skeletons of three powerful Indians at the Academy who
at one time in their wildness roamed over the state of Maryland armed
with such instruments as nature gave them or that their limited skill
taught them to make.
Two of these skeletons belonged to individuals evidently of gigantic
size. The vertebrae and bones of the legs are nearly as thick as those of
a horse and the length of the long bones exceptional.
The skulls are of fine proportions, ample and with walls of moderate
thickness and of great strength and stiffened beyond with a powerful
occipital ridge. The curves of the forehead are moderate and not
retreating, suggesting intelligence and connected with jaws of moderate
development.
The locality from which these skeletons came is in Frederick County,
19
near Antietam Creek. It was formerly supposed to have been the
battleground of two tribes of Indians: the Catawbas and the Delawares.
Before the coming of the white man, this site was occupied as a
village by Indians of great stature, some of them six-and-a-half to seven
feet in height.
POTOMAC RIVER GIANT
_ MORNING HERALD, MAY 14, 1956 _
The skeleton of a giant Indian, maybe seven or more feet in height, who
died and was buried about the time Christ was born, has been unearthed
from prehistoric burial grounds along the Potomac River near Point of
Rocks recently.
Nicholas Yinger, who has been excavating at this and other sites of
early Indian villages along the Potomac River in recent years,
discovered the skeleton of the giant Indian, along with the other
artifacts buried with the body, on Saturday, April 28, just a few weeks
ago. Mr. Yinger said that apart from the huge size of the Algonquian
Indian, the next most interesting thing about the remains is that the bow
and quiver of five arrows were buried with the body. Two elk-antlers
and three-and-one-half-inch arrow points in the center of the tibias are
part of the quiver of arrows. Near the point of the antler-arrows is a
perfect boiled-bone fishhook revealing his fishing line was also placed
with the body. Three large white-flint triangular arrow heads were
found at the side of the left tibia.
“This aborigine must have been a hunter with great strength as is
indicated by the broad-shank flint points used in a powerful bow,”
explained Yinger.
ANCIENT BURIAL GROUND AT BLACK
CREEK
_ CHARLEROI MAIL, MAY 7, 1953 _
Along the Susquehanna River in Indiana County, Pennsylvania a major
Indian burial site was uncovered. All together, forty-nine skeletons
were exhumed, the tallest being eight feet tall. These skeletons were
20
reportedly taken to the Harrisburg Museum for reassembly and then
shipped to the Smithsonian for further study. However, the Smithsonian
denies any knowledge of them.
On the site of the William H. Rhea farm (circa 1871-1880) in
Conemaugh Township just west of the mouth of Black Legs Creek,
skeletons of men, probably Indians, were found. Noted local historian
Clarence Stephenson says, “One of the skeletons is of a giant nearly
eight feet tall. The giant’s skeleton measured 89 inches from the top of
the skull to the phalanges of the feet. It was covered with small stones,
lay on the back, and measured 26 inches across the chest.”
The following report from 1916 is of the discovery of skeletons
found in the area of Sayre, Pennsylvania.
REPORT OF SIXTY-EIGHT SKELETONS
AVERAGING SEVEN-FEET TALL
_ CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL, SEPTEMBER 20, 1916 _
On July 13, Professor Skinner of the American Indian Museum,
excavating the mound at Tioga Point, near Sayre, Pennsylvania,
uncovered the bones of 68 men, which he estimates had been buried at
least seven or eight hundred years. The average height indicated by the
skeletons was seven feet, but many were taller. Evidence of the gigantic
size of these men was seen in huge axes found beside the bones.
GIANT EIGHT FEET, SEVEN INCHES TALL
UNEARTHED
_ OHIO SCIENCE ANNUAL, 1898 _
A rare archaeological discovery has been made near Reinersville in
Morgan County, Ohio. A small knoll, which had always been supposed
to be the result of an uprooted tree, was opened recently and discovered
to be the work of mound builders.
Just below the surrounding surface, a layer of boulders and pebbles
was found. Directly underneath this was found the skeleton of a giant 8
feet, 7 inches in height. Surrounding the skeleton were bone and stone
21
implements, stone hatchets, and other characteristics of the mound
builders.
The discovery is considered by the scientists as one of the most
important ever made in Ohio. The skeleton is now in the possession of
a Reinersville collector.
THE BIG WHOPPER: EIGHTEEN FEET AND COUNTING?
The following newspaper account from an 1870 edition of the Ohio
Democrat postulates that the giant, whose skeleton was found with a
nine-foot-long sword, must have stood eighteen feet tall “in his
stockings.” It then alleges that the skeleton was shipped to New York.
Since this account is highly speculative to say the least, let’s just say
this was one big skeleton and leave it at that.
CARDIFF GIANT UNDONE WITH AN
ENORMOUS IRON HELMET
OHIO DEMOCRAT, JANUARY 14, 1870
On Tuesday morning last, while Mr. William Thompson, assisted by
Mr. Robert R. Smith, was engaged in making an excavation near the
house of the former, about half a mile north of West Hickory,
preparatory to erecting a derrick, they exhumed an enormous helmet of
iron, which was corroded with rust.
Further digging brought to light a sword, which measured nine feet
in length. Curiosity incited them to enlarge the hole, and after some
little time they discovered the bones of two enormous feet. Following
up the “lead” they had so unexpectedly struck, in a few hours’ time
they had unearthed the well-preserved remains of an enormous giant,
belonging to a species of the human family, which probably inhabited
this and other parts of the world, at the time of which the Bible speaks
when it says: “And there were giants in those days.”
The helmet is said to be of the shape of those among the ruins of
Nineveh. The bones of the skeleton are a remarkable white. The teeth
are all in their places and all of extraordinary size. These relics have
been taken to Tionesta where they are visited by large numbers of
people daily.
22
When his “giantship” was in the flesh he must have stood eighteen
feet tall in his stockings. These remarkable relics will be shipped to
New York early next week. The joints of the skeleton are now being
glued together. These remains were found about twelve feet under the
surface of a mound, which had been thrown up probably centuries ago,
and which was not more than three feet above the level of the ground
around it.
SKELETONS SEVEN FEET LONG
_ NEW YORK TIMES, MAY 5, 1885 _
Centerburg, Ohio: Licking County has been for years a favorite field
for students of Indian history. Last week a small mound near Homer
was opened by some school boys. Today further search was made and
several feet below the surface of the earth, in a large vault with stone
floor and bark covering, were found four huge skeletons, three being
over seven feet in length, and the other a full eight feet.
The skeletons lay with their feet to the east on a bed of charcoal in
which were numerous burned bones. About the neck of the largest
skeleton were a lot of stone beads. The grave contained about 30 stone
vessels and implements, the most striking being a curiously-wrought
pipe. It is said to be the only engraved stone pipe ever found. A stone
kettle, holding about a gallon in which was a residue of saline matter,
bears evidence of much skill. Their bows, a number of arrows, stone
hatchets, and a stone knife are among the implements that were found
at the site.
ANOTHER OHIO GIANT NOW SEEMS SMALL
AT ONLY EIGHT FEET
OHIO MORNING SUN NEWS HERALD, APRIL 14, 1904.
A giant skeleton of a man has been unearthed at the Woolverton farm, a
short distance from Tippecanoe City, Ohio. It measures eight feet from
the top of the head to the ankles, the feet being missing, says this
newspaper reporter.
The skull is large enough to fit as a helmet over the average man’s
23
head. This skeleton was one of seven, buried in a circle, the feet of all
being towards the center. Rude implements were near. The skeletons
are thought to be those of mound builders.
GIANT BURIED WITH A PANTHER
This is one of several accounts that I ran across in my research of a
giant skeleton being buried with a panther. The ritual context of these
animal burials has never been properly studied or understood. In this
account, the contents of eleven mounds were said to have been shipped
to the Smithsonian for study.
GIGANTIC MAN BURIED NEXT TO
FEROCIOUS PANTHER
CINCINNATI COMMERCIAL GAZETTE, SEPTEMBER 26, 1889
Soon after the 1st of March relics were collected to be placed on loan to
the Smithsonian Institution at Washington D.C. During the last two
months eleven mounds have been opened and their contents taken to
the museum and placed on exhibition. These mounds vary in height
from eight to thirty feet, are generally conical in shape, and contain all
the way from 300 to 10,000 square yards of dirt. They were built by the
aborigines of this country hundreds of years ago to serve as burial
places for the distinguished dead. They are generally placed near some
stream in a valley and not infrequently on high points of land, which
command a good view of the country, but the larger ones are in the
valleys. These mounds are usually composed of clay, sometimes of
sand, and often have layers of charcoal or burnt clay in them. These
layers are often as brightly colored as if they had been painted.. . .
About five feet above this layer, or nine feet from the summit of the
mound, was a skeleton of a very large individual who had buried by the
side of it the bones of a panther. Whether the person had killed the
panther and it was buried with him as an honor, or whether the panther
had killed the individual, one cannot say.
FORTY-THREE MOUNDS OPENED
This much, however, can be said—That in 43 mounds opened no find
of this nature has been made. It is therefore quite interesting and
24
important. The skull of this panther was very large, teeth very long and
sharp. It would take a mound builder of a great deal of nerve to attack a
beast of this size if he had nothing but a stone hatchet and bow and
arrows to defend himself with.
REGULAR SKELETON FOUND NEXT TO
GIANT
Just below this skeleton and lying on the layer of buried bones was a
medium-sized personage who had buried around his neck in the manner
of a necklace, between his upper and lower jaw, 147 bone and shell
beads. The shell beads were made from the thick part of Conch and
Pyrula shells. These shells must have been carried from the Atlantic
Ocean, as they are ocean shells, and not found inland, or the tribe to
which the man belonged may have traded with tribes near the ocean
and thereby got the beads.
THE GIANTS OF CONNEAUT
This is only one of many accounts of ancient burial fields containing
multiple giant burials. In this case the burial site was said to have been
three to four acres in size and to have contained several thousand
burials, including a magnificent eight-foot-tall queen bedecked in
elaborate copper jewelry.
Ashtabula County Historical Record, 1878
In 1798 the first permanent settlers from the east arrived in the
Western Reserve of Ohio. They began to clear the forests along the
southern shore of Lake Erie, and in the process found numerous
ancient earthen structures and almost everywhere the finely made
spear points and other artifacts of a long forgotten and once
populous native society, a people obviously quite different from
the Massasauga Indians then living in that country. A generation
before the first immigrant explorers of western Pennsylvania and
southern Ohio had made similar discoveries: the extensive
earthworks of Circleville and Marietta, Ohio, were already well
publicized by the time that settler Aaron Wright and his
companions began to stake out their new homes along Conneaut
Creek, in what would become Ashtabula County, Ohio.
25
The Discoveries of Aaron Wright in 1800
Perhaps it was because he was a single young man with plenty of
energy, or perhaps it was because his choice for a homestead
included a large “mound builder” burial ground. Whatever the
reasons may have been, Aaron Wright has gone down in the
history books as the discoverer of the “Conneaut Giants,” the
unusually large-boned ancient inhabitants of Ashtabula County,
Ohio. In an 1844 account, Harvey Nettleton reported that this
“ancient burying grounds of about four acres” was situated in what
soon became the village of New Salem (later renamed Conneaut),
“extending northward from the bank of the creek ... to Main
Street, in an oblong square” tract that “appeared to have been
accurately surveyed into lots, running from the north to the south.”
Nettleton also said that the ancient graves “were distinguished by
slight depressions in the surface of the earth disposed in straight
rows, with the intervening spaces, or alleys, cover[ing] the whole
area . . . estimated to contain from two to three thousand graves.
These depressions, on a thorough examination made by Esq. Aaron
Wright, as early as 1800, were found invariably to contain human
bones, blackened with time, which on exposure to the air soon
crumbled to dust.”
The prehistoric cemetery on Aaron Wright’s land was
remarkable enough, just in its size and the configuration of the
graves; but it was what was in those graves and in the adjacent
burial mounds that captured Nettleton’s attention.
The mounds that were situated in the eastern part of what is now
the village of Conneaut and the extensive burying ground near the
Presbyterian Church appear to have had no connection with the
burying places of the Indians. They doubtless refer to a more
remote period and are the relics of an extinct race, of whom the
Indians had no knowledge. These mounds were of comparatively
small size, and of the same general character of those that are
widely scattered over the country. What is most remarkable
concerning them is that among the quantity of human bones they
contain, there are found specimens belonging to men of large
stature, and who must have been nearly allied to a race of giants.
Skulls were taken from these mounds, the cavities of which were
26
of sufficient capacity to admit the head of an ordinary man, and
jaw-bones that might be fitted on over the face with equal facility.
The bones of the arms and lower limbs were of the same
proportions, exhibiting ocular proof of the degeneracy of the
human race since the period in which these men occupied the soil
which we now inhabit. Circleville, Ohio, antiquarian Caleb
Atwater was the known first person to comment upon the
earthworks at Conneaut (then New Salem) in a published text. In
his 1820 report, “Description of the Antiquities Discovered in the
State of Ohio” Atwater describes the “work at Salem ... on a hill
near Coneaught river . . . having two parallel circular walls and a
ditch between them.” Atwater says practically nothing about the
burial mounds in the vicinity of this pre-Columbian fort “on a hill,”
but he does provide the following information of his report: “My
informant says, within this work are sometimes found skeletons of
a people of small stature, which, if true, sufficiently identifies it to
have belonged to that race of men who erected our tumuli.” Thus,
it was Caleb Atwater’s opinion that the builders of the ancient
mounds were a “people of small stature,” and that reports of larger
skeletons uncovered among their ruins were the exception, not the
rule. To the above summary of Atwater’s investigations it might
also be added that many of the earthworks he described he never
saw himself, relying upon information supplied by untrained
observers living in the vicinity of these ancient remains.
What Nehemiah King Found in 1829
Nettleton’s account was widely circulated when it was summarized
in Henry Howe’s Historical Collections of Ohio, 1847. Howe
writes of Thomas Montgomery and Aaron Wright coming to Ohio
in the spring of 1798, and of the subsequent discovery of the
“extensive burying ground” and of “the human bones found in the
mounds” nearby. Howe repeats the report that among these
uncovered bones, “were some belonging to men of gigantic
structure.” He also tells how, in 1829, a tree was cut down next to
the ancient “Fort Hill in Conneaut” and that the local land owner,
“The Hon. Nehemiah King, with a magnifying glass, counted 350
annualer rings” beyond some cut marks near the tree’s center.
Howe concludes: “Deducting 350 from 1829 leaves 1479, which
27
must have been the year when these cuts were made. This was
thirteen years before the discovery of America by Columbus. It
perhaps was done by the race of the mounds, with an axe of
copper, as that people had the art of hardening that metal so as to
cut like steel.”
The same year that Henry Howe’s history of Ohio appeared
another interesting book was published by the Smithsonian
Institution, entitled. Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley.
On that seminal report by E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis appears the
first known published description of “Fort Hill,” that strange pre-
Columbian landmark situated on the property of Aaron Wright’s
neighbor, Nehemiah King.
Ancient Work near Conneaut, Ashtabula County, Ohio
This work is at present very slight, but distinctly traceable. The
sketch is a mere coup d’oeil, without measurements. The elevation
on the bluff upon which it stands is about seventy feet; and the
banks of the aluminous state are, upon the north, very precipitous. .
. . Upon the south side ... the wall, which skirts the brow of the
hill, is accompanied by an outer ditch, while upon the north there is
a simple embankment. The ascent (marked C-C in the cut), is
gradual and easy. Within the enclosure the earth is very black and
rich; outside of the wall it is stiff clay. The adjacent bottoms are
very fertile, and the creek is everywhere fordable. There can be no
doubt that this was a fortified position. Near the village of
Conneaut are a number of mounds, and other traces of an ancient
population, among which is an aboriginal cemetery regularly laid
out, and of great extent.
28
AMGDSMV W0G1K p
CONMfAUT ASMTI6UCA COUNT Y,
OHIO .
S' 4 at H'AtJ/2r.r*y $•*■*’*'*yor' .
Fig. 1.2. An 1847 sketch of Fort Hill by Chas. Whittlesey, surveyor
OHIO ACCOUNT OF NINE-FOOT GIANTS
STEVENS POINT DAILY JOURNAL, MAY 1, 1886
It is very evident that at an early day in the history of this country, this
section of Ohio was an important camping ground for the American
Indian. And, indeed, discoveries are frequently made, which lead
29
people interested in the matter of prehistoric America to believe that a
race of mankind, superior in size, strength, and intelligence to the
common red man of the forest, flourished not only along the coasts East
and South, but right here in southern Ohio. There are in this county
several burying grounds, and two of them are located five miles west of
this city, near Jasper, one on the farm of Mr. William Bush and one on
Mr. Matthew Mark’s farm. In a conversation with a gentleman who has
seen [skeletons] unearthed at the Mark bank, we were told that many
dozens of human skeletons have been exhumed since the bank was first
opened.
Some of these skeletons have been measured, and the largest have
been found to be nine feet long and over.
At one time ten skeletons were exhumed. They had been buried in a
circle, standing in an erect position, and were in a comparatively well-
preserved condition. One remarkable fact about all the skeletons
unearthed at these places is the perfect state of preservation in which
their teeth are found to be. Not a decayed tooth has been discovered,
and this would seem to indicate that these people naturally had
excellent teeth or some extraordinary manner of preserving them.
GIANTS FOUND IN GEORGIA
The find of a giant race averaging six and a half to seven feet tall
electrified the nation, as attested to by the following Sunday photo
feature, which appeared in prominent newspapers across the country on
August 2, 1936. This article appeared complete with comparative
photos of giant skulls and photos of an entire skeleton laid out on its
back at the site. Beneath one of the photos of the main archaeologist
pointing to a giant skull was this caption: “Dr. Preston Holder (above
photo), who is directing archaeological study and excavation on Sea
Island, Georgia, points out the unusual characteristics of one of his
amazing finds. The skeletons of these hitherto unknown American
aborigines showed they all ranged in height from six-and-one half to
seven feet in height.”
GEORGIA’S SAND DUNES YIELD STARTLING
PROOF OF A PREHISTORIC RACE OF
30
GIANTS
ARCHAEOLOGISTS MYSTIFIED AT FINDING
SKELETONS OF MEN WHO WERE SEVEN FEET
TALL
_ SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, AUGUST 2, 1936 _
Perhaps the discovery of the first dinosaur bones on the North
American continent created no more sensation in scientific circles than
the recent revelations of prehistoric man lately developed off the coast
of Georgia. Excavating in the sand dunes of the sun-sprayed Golden
Isles, Georgia, archaeologists have gouged out the strange record of an
amazing prehistoric race of giants.
With pick ax and spade, these searchers into the past have burrowed
their way beneath the surface of the palm-clad dunes of Georgia’s
semi-tropical coastal islands, to delve into the mysteries of a previously
unsuspected race of mankind. The question uppermost in their mind
today is: What manner of men were these, the members of whose tribe
all averaged between six and one half and seven feet tall?
Preston Holder, archaeologist, is directing the excavation work,
which has been sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution. Slowly,
painstakingly. Holder is endeavoring to piece together the slender
threads that will lead him into the past. He has expressed the opinion
that the Smithsonian enterprise will throw important light upon a thus
far unrecorded tribe, and perhaps establish a new link in the history of
mankind in North America.
The Golden Isles extend in a chain from Savannah as far south as
Fernandina. They are today inhabited mostly by wealthy Americans
whose luxurious summer homes dot the landscape. The Golden Isles
are romantic in the extreme. The known history of these islands fairly
reeks with pirate lore, tales of mystery and violence, and lost treasures.
NEW AIRPORT, OLD GIANTS
But today only one of all the islands still remains open to the public. It
is called Saint Simons and Sea Island. And had it not been for the
never-ceasing strides of modern civilization, it might well be that the
31
new proof of America’s prehistoric giants might never have been
found. For it was the ground-breaking for Georgia’s new Glynn County
airport—which will be constructed on Sea Island—that revealed the
first evidences of the find that has since brought archaeologists fairly
tumbling over one another.
Workers on the proposed new airport hadn’t set off more than two or
three charges of dynamite when they were amazed to find a number of
shattered skulls and skeletons scattered about. One of the nation’s
leading archaeologists, Dr. F. M. Setzler, of the United States National
Museum, was dispatched to the scene. One look, and Dr. Setzler was
convinced that the earth beneath the sand dunes would bear importantly
upon the history and habits of southern coast aborigines.
SMITHSONIAN FIRST TO TEST GIANT
SKELETON
So the systematic work began. Some of the first skulls to be disinterred
by Preston Holder have already been examined at the Smithsonian
Institution by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka (to appear at another site as well),
foremost authority on North American types.
One mound located at the airport site was composed by at least three
layers of shell, each six inches to a foot thick. Very little midden, or
garbage, was found in the shell. The mound was fifty feet in diameter,
with a six foot rise. Burials were found to have been made immediately
beneath the layers of shell.
It was in this mound that archaeologists made the important
discovery of a complete skeleton of a young man, believed to have
been in his teens at the time of his death. From tip to tip it exactly
measured six and one half feet. Every detail of the burial of this
skeleton indicated that he had been an important member of the tribe—
probably a chieftain—or at least the son of a chieftain.
His bones were arranged with exceeding care. And between his right
arm and his side were found three small bone awls, three large deer
bone awls, and three split and worked bones in the process of being
made into implements or weapons. Over his left shoulder were four
mussel-shell pendants and a chipped-stone spear point, while fastened
about his left knee was a string of sea snail shell beads, numbering
32
about 80 beads in all.
AN APRON WOVEN OF SHELLS
Of the first four interments made in this mound, all were of the full-
flexed type or curled up with knees close to the chins. Two of these
were children, buried close together in “spoon fashion.” They were
heavily covered with hematite paint, a red pigment used by these
Indians. One of the skeletons still wore an apron woven of 225 olivella
shell beads. Other burials yielded by the mound were all prone or fully
extended. Skulls were missing from these.
THOUSANDS OF ARTIFACTS DISCOVERED
BY THE SMITHSONIAN
At the village under the airport site. Holder and his workers recovered
approximately 4,000 shards, or pieces of tribal pottery and cooking
utensils. While a great deal of the pottery was plain ware and quite
crude, there were a few pieces that were somewhat decorative. Colors
ranged from black, through gray and red, to buff. The decorated ware
showed at least five types of stamped design, including the “check”
stamp, the “delta” stamp, and a “herringbone” stamp. In addition there
was discovered three distinct types of cord-marked ware, three types of
thong-marked ware, and examples of rare incised and punctuaic sherds
(connection to Stonehenge cord-marked pottery).
Aside from pottery, numerous examples of implements and burial
offerings have been found, both in the village and the burial mound.
They include a conch hoe, a conch abrader, a conch bowl, and an
unidentified piece of polished conch. Pendants carved from turtle shells
and the teeth of bears are among the invaluable archaeological finds
which have been made.
SACRED POOLS, SECRET CAVES, AND THE HALLS OF
THE MOUNTAIN KINGS
In all my extensive research into the hidden history of giants in
America, the most detailed, wide-ranging, and colorful account I came
across was The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee: Up to the
First Settlements Therein by the White People, in the Year 1768 by
John Haywood. Haywood combines an exhaustive first-person account
33
of his many astonishing discoveries with an excellent overview of the
previous historical finds in the area. Among his many amazing
discoveries are accounts of giants found in a walled spring; caves with
stones that rolled away, containing more giants; and four upright
standing stones that formed a square box, inside of which was the body
of another giant.
ON THE TENNESSEE GIANTS
The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, 1823
By John Haywood
The length and dimensions of the skeletons . . . found in East and
West Tennessee . . . prove demonstratively, that the ancient
inhabitants of this country, either the primitive or secondary
settlers, were of gigantic stature compared with the present races of
Lydians.
On the farm of Mr. John Miller of White county are a number of
small graves and also many large ones, the bones in which show
that the bodies to which they belonged, when alive, must have
been, seven feet high and upwards.
THE HIDDEN ROOMS FILLED WITH GIANTS
I am always particularly fascinated with reports of hidden caves and
giant burials. In this account, the cave in question is located near
Sparta, Kentucky. In 1814, giant bones were found in this cave, as well
as in a grave burial in the same area. Later in the report, more giant
bones are found along the Tennessee River below Kingston and at
another site two miles from Nashville. John Haywood continues:
About the year 1814, Mr. Lawrence found in Scarborough’s cave,
which is on the Calf-killer River, a branch of the Cany Lork, about
12 or 15 miles from Sparta, in a little room in the cave, many
human bones of a monstrous size. He took a jaw bone and applied
it to his own face, and when his chin touched the concave of the
chin bone, the hinder ends of the jaw bone did not touch the skin of
his face on either side. He took a thigh bone, and applied the upper
end of it to his own hip joint, and the lower end reached four
inches below the knee joint.
34
Mr. Andrew Bryan saw a grave opened about 4 miles
northwardly from Sparta, on the Calf- killer Fork. He took a thigh
bone and raising np his knee, he applied the knee joint of the bone
to the extreme length of his own knee, and the upper end of the
bone passed out behind his as far as the full width of his body. Mr.
Lawrence is about 5 feet, 10 inches high, and Mr. Bryan about 5
feet, 9. Mr. Sharp Whitley was in a cave near the place where Mr.
Bryan saw the graves opened. In it were many of these bones. The
skulls lie plentifully in it, and all the other bones of the human
body; all in proportion, and of monstrous size.
Human bones were taken out of a mound on the Tennessee River
below Kingston, which Mr. Brown saw measured by Mr. Simms.
The thigh bones of those skeletons, when applied to Mr. Simms’s
thigh, were an inch and a half longer than his, from the point of his
hip to his knee: supposing the whole frame to have been in the
same proportion, the body it belonged to must have been seven feet
high or upwards. Many bones in the mounds there are of equal
size. Suppose a man seven or eight feet high, that is from 10 inches
to 2 feet taller than men of the common size; suppose the body
broader in the same proportion, also his arms and legs; would he
not be entitled to the name of giant?
Col. William Sheppard, late of North-Carolina, in the year 1807,
dug up, on the plantation of Col. Joel Lewis, 2 miles from
Nashville, the jaw bones of a man, which easily covered the whole
chin and jaw of Col. Lewis, a man of large size. Some years
afterwards, Mr. Cassady dug up a skeleton from under a small
mound near the large one at Bledsoe’s lick, in Sumner County,
which measured little short of seven feet in length.
SQUARE WALLS ENCLOSE SPRING, MORE GIANTS
While a cellar was being dug at a plantation four miles outside
Nashville, giant burials were found in association with a walled and
enclosed sacred spring.
Human bones have been dug up in the cellar at the plantation
where Judge Overton now lives, in Havidbon County, four miles
southwestwardly from Nashville. These bones were of
35
extraordinary size. The under jaw bone of one skeleton very easily
slipped over the jaw of Mr. Childress, a stout man, full fleshed,
very robust, and considerably over the common size.
These bones were dug up within the traces of ancient walls, in
the form of a square of two or three hundred yards in length,
situated near an excellent, never failing spring of pure and well-
tasted water. The spring was enclosed within the walls. A great
number of skeletons were found within the enclosure, a few feet
below the surface of the earth. On the outer side were the traces of
an old ditch and rampart, thrown up on the inside. Some small
mounds were also within the enclosure.
ROLL AWAY THE STONE—MORE SECRET CAVE ROOMS
This part of Haywood’s report is of the discovery of a cave with several
secret rooms, located seven and a half miles north of Pulaski,
Kentucky. The entrances to the cave and to an interior secret
passageway were both covered by flat stones that could be rolled away.
Inside, the bones of giants were found laid out over a paved floor.
At the plantation of Col. William Sheppard, in the county of Giles,
seven and a half miles north of Pulaski, on the east side of the
creek, is a cave with several rooms. The first is 45 feet wide, and
27 long; 4 feet deep; the upper part is formed of solid and even
rock. Into this cave was a passage, which had been so artfully
covered, that it escaped detection until lately. A flat stone, three
feet wide and four feet long, rested upon the ground, and inclining
against the cave, closing part of the mouth. At the end of this, and
on the side of the mouth that is left open is another stone rolled,
which filling this also, closed the whole mouth.
When these rocks were removed, and the cave opened, on the
inside of the cave were found several bones—the jawbone of a
child, the arm bone of a man, the skulls and thigh-bones of men.
The whole bottom of the cave was covered with flat stones of a
bluish hue, being closely joined together, and of different forms
and sizes. They formed the floor of the cave. Upon the floor the
bones were laid. The hat of Mr. Egbert Sheppard, seven inches
wide and eight inches long, just covered and slipped over one of
36
the skulls.
At the mouth of Obed’s river, on the point between it and the
Cumberland river, which is high ground, certain persons, in
digging, struck a little below the surface, four stones standing
upright, and so placed in relation to each other, as to form a square
or box, which enclosed a skeleton, placed on its feet in an erect
posture. The skull was large enough to go over the head of a man
of common size. The thigh bones applied to those of a man of
ordinary stature, reached from the joint of his hip to the calf of his
leg.
The article below is one of the first articles to lament the destruction
of the mounds, with these florid words, which bring an ironic Victorian
smile to my face when I read them.
PLOWED UP AN INDIAN
_ KEWANNA HERALD, AUGUST 18, 1898 _
For two centuries, at least, the body has lain crumbling away to mother
earth. Who can speak the weal and woe, the heart ache and joy thus
represented? It is like a breeze from another world, and life seems
fleeting faster still as one gazes on the remains of a once glorious
union, now silent evermore.
SKELETON INDIAN BRAVE FOUND NEAR
SHADY DELL
The finding of arrowheads and stone axes that were used by the
roaming Indians of other days is a common enough occurrence, but this
week there was disinterred the bones of one of these ancient
inhabitants, which has made it the talk of the community. Charley
Dukes, on the old family farm near Shady Dell School House, while
plowing near a large, old oak stump, the tree of which was cut down
over forty years ago, turned up the skeleton of a giant of the Indian
occupation of this country.
For years, two large rocks in the field, which had the appearance of
being perfectly placed, have been the wonder of the Dukes family, but
now they find that the mound in which the bones were found is directly
37
on the line between these stones, designating, therefore, the place of
burial like our tombstones of today.
The bones are those of a large person, although the two centuries of
summer and winter have dealt severely with them. The remains show
parts of the femur, tibia, innominate, phalanges, and several face bones
including some very well-preserved teeth.
MANY SKELETON OF AN EXTINCT INDIAN
RACE UNEARTHED IN THE HOOSIER STATE
A huge gravel pit has been opened at Whitlock, Indiana. Soon after the
excavating began a skeleton was found and as the pit widened other
skeletons were unearthed until at least thirty graves had been opened
and many skeletons brought to light, evidently the remains of an Indian
tribe.
One skeleton was found beneath a large stump, and another was
found twelve feet underground. The graves appear in regular order, and
the occupants were buried in a sitting posture. In one grave three
skeletons, supposed to be those of a woman and two children, were
found.
The other day the largest specimen was unearthed, the body of a
person who in life must have been a giant.
A peculiarity of the skeletons is that the teeth are nearly all in a
perfect state of preservation. In one grave beside the human skeletons
was that of a dog, a copper spearhead, an earthen pot, and numerous
beads proving that some important personage had been put to rest there.
A NINE-FOOT GIANT BURIED NEXT TO A FAIR-SKINNED
INFANT GIRL
Here is a case of the burial of a white-haired child and a nine-foot-tall
giant with a chain of mica around his neck. Other finds in Indiana
include giants clad in copper armor.
A History of Jennings County, Indiana, 1885
Years ago, when Mr. Robinson’s father began digging a cellar out
of the hillside, he found there the skeleton of a little child. The hair
was white and there were many indications that the child was not
38
an Indian, but belonged to a fair-complexioned race of people.
Again in 1881, the skeleton of a human of unusual size was
found in the mound. From comparative measurements of bones of
this skeleton, it was thought to have been about nine feet in length.
Cedar sticks were found around his waist, probably a symbol of
some religious rite. A chain of mica was around his neck.
DOUBLE DENTITIONS
_ LOGANSPORT PHAROS TRIBUNE, JUNE 19, 1912 _
Charles Milton found a skeleton that is thought to be that of an Indian
while digging sand near Lake Cleott yesterday. The bones are well
preserved and very large. The jaw bone is almost twice as large as that
of the ordinary person.
One peculiarity about the jaw is the fact that the teeth are double
both front and back. The sandpit where the bones were found is
supposed to be an old Indian mound. Several arrow heads were
excavated and other like utensils were found. Among these was a
peculiarly shaped flint supposed to have been a fish scaler. About two
or three bushels of charcoal was found along the side of the skeleton.
A History of Clay County, Missouri, 1888
In his researches among the forests of western Missouri, Judge E.
P. West has discovered a number of conical-shaped mounds
similar in construction to those found in Ohio and Kentucky.
As yet only one of these mounds has been opened. Judge West
discovered a skeleton about two weeks ago and made a report to
other members of the society. They accompanied him to the
mound, and not far from the surface excavated and took out the
remains of two skeletons.
The bones were very large—so large, in fact, that when
compared with an ordinary skeleton of modern date, they appear to
have formed part of a giant.
The head bones, such as have not rotted away, are monstrous in
size. The lower jaw of one skeleton is in a state of preservation,
and is double the size of the jaw of a civilized person. The thigh
bone, when compared to that of an ordinary modern skeleton,
39
looks like that of a horse. The length, thickness, and muscular
development are remarkable.
The bodies were discovered in a sitting posture in the mounds,
and among the bones were found stone weapons different in shape
from the tools and weapons known to be in use by the aboriginal
Indians of this land.
SCIENTISTS FIND GIANT SKELETON: IN LIFE
THEY AVERAGED TWELVE FEET HIGH
_ MONROE COUNTY MAIL, JUNE 18, 1914 _
Skeletons of a race of giants who averaged twelve feet in height were
found by workmen engaged on a drainage project in Crowville, near
here.
There are several score at least of the skeletons, and they lie in
various positions. It is believed they were killed in a prehistoric fight
and that the bodies lay where they fell until covered with alluvial
deposits due to the flooding of the Mississippi River. No weapons of
any sort were found at the site, and it is believed the Titans must have
struggled with wooden clubs. The skulls are in a perfect state of
preservation, and some of the jawbones are large enough to surround a
baby’s body.
“GIANT ON THE BEACH” IN TEXAS
In Texas, where everything is big, it would be to the state’s everlasting
horror if it turned out that its giants were smaller than the other giants
who once ruled over the rest of America in ancient times. In 1931, the
San Antonio Express announced that a federal Works Progress
Administration (WPA) archaeological team digging in association with
the University of Texas discovered what at that time was called “the
largest human skull found in the world in Victoria County Texas,” and
its owner was dubbed the “giant on the beach.” Photographs reveal that
this skull was “twice the size of the skull of a normal man.” This find
was held at the University of Texas, where Dr. Ales Hrdlicka of the
Smithsonian examined it and related discoveries, and in a joint press
release it was said that “these finds in Texas are beginning to give
40
weight to the theory that man lived in Texas 40,000 to 45,000 years
ago.”
A close-up photo shows three skulls in comparison with the Giant
Skull. The caption under the giant skull reads: “Believed to be possibly
the largest found in the world, the human skull shown on the right was
recently unearthed in Victoria County by the University of Texas
anthropologists. The other two skulls are of normal size.”
SAH ANTONIO EXPRESS
Beach Giant's Skull Unearthed
By WPA Workers N ear Victoria
Believed fo Be Largest Ever Found in
World; Normal Head Also Found
Tint Tex>* "had a (Mot on the buch" In the lor* ago appears
prcJm'jlc from IV li.-gc tktil! rrcentjy uvsrthed in * mound ir,
Victor:* Cmnty, behoved to V the largest huctnn skull ever found
| in the United sines and possibly in the world
Twice the cue et the tkuli of
normal man. the lragmer.ti were
dug up by W, Daffm, archaeclo
gist, who It emsvjiiEg the GMUnd
in Victoria County under a WPA
protest epansered by the Vniver-
sity of Texas. In the same mound
case of giantism. Several large
human body bones aita bar* been
unearned at tlie site.
Marcus K GcicHiein, physical
ar.thropclcgu; employed on Use
WPA ptojest. formerly Wes an
aid* of Ales Hdrlleken. curator of
and at the «w '■**?•* I tb* National Museum of Physical
deed skull was found. The pieces f Anthropolgy.
****** from the pound were re- Finds made through excavs-
constructed in the WPA labi/ri- : ; ons j n T*exas are beginning to
tory coder supervision of ptiys.- give weight to t.V theerv that
ca: anthro;iu:C<SsU. man lived IB Texts 40000 to
A study is selng made to deter years ago, It Is said.
mine the hu.*« ukuSl w;t — — -
tail ftf a n» beloncirf lo a trit* ATAMT SOCIETY Mt’KW
of cxi/aoMlintrv garsc men or. San Ar.cotuo Phaiitclic Social
\a tether the aktill wi that ol hold it* fir« mttliti of 1M0
nbnoniul membrr of n tribe, a I at the Y. C A. at fi:.% p. n
GIANT SKULL—Believed to be possibly the larg¬
est found in the world, the human skull shown on
the right was recently unearthed in Victoria
County by Texas University anthropologists. The
other two are of normal sac.
Monday, vh«n a hours* of rare
stamp* will be nhowa by col-
lectors in this vicinity. New offi-
fws of Jit society arc Norman
11. VtrorV, pmtdmt; B. A. Tur¬
ner. vies prttident: L. F Fields,
jterttary and treasurer. and Kd
ward A’.hach. reporter. Both the
president and vice president were
reflected.
Fig. 1.3. This 1931 article documents the WPA find of the largest skull ever
discovered. Scientists from the University of Texas posited inhabitation of Texas
40,000 years ago (San Antonio Express).
THE SMITHSONIAN AND THE DR. HRDLICKA CONNECTION
Earlier we learned about Hrdlicka in connection with the finds of giants
off Georgia’s coast (see here). Now we find that Hrdlicka was also
involved with the Texas beach giant, in a special consultation for the
Smithsonian.
SMITHSONIAN SAYS THE SKULL SIZE OF ARIZONA GIANT
IS “BEYOND COMPREHENSION”
For anyone doubting the immediate and immense reach of the
Smithsonian, here is an amusing article about a rancher who refused to
sell his giant to the Smithsonian representatives, who had traveled from
Washington D.C., reaching Arizona within an incredible two weeks of
41
the discovery.
RANCHER REFUSES TO SELL SKELETON OF
GIANT
ARIZONA JOURNAL-MINER, OCTOBER 13, 1911
Peter Marx of Walnut Creek, discoverer of a prehistoric human giant
on his farm several weeks ago, while in the city yesterday, stated that
the curiosity is attracting such deep interest in scientific circles that he
is almost delayed with his letters and during the past two weeks he has
been visited by Mr. and Mrs. Shoup, the former an attache of the
Smithsonian Institution at Washington, who made the long journey for
the express purpose of viewing the frame of the giant of other days. Mr.
Shoup was provided with photographic instruments and took several
pictures.
Mr. Shoup, of the Smithsonian, also desired to take it (the giant
skeleton) back to Washington, but this request was held up by Mr.
Marx stating that as the subject was found in the territory it should be
kept there.
Mr. Shoup was very much interested in those portions of the human
frame that were unusually large, particularly the skull, which indicated
that the giant was of such abnormal size as to be beyond
comprehension as that of a human being. Mr. Marx has uncovered
another burying ground near the point where the skeleton was found.
IRRIGATION DITCHES ARE A SIGN OF
ANCIENT HIGH INTELLIGENCE
An old irrigating ditch has also been partly recovered, and it is Mr.
Shoup’s (of the Smithsonian) belief that the place was intelligently
cultivated in some past age by an industrious people. Mr. Marx has
uncovered many implements, some of which are unique in construction
and for what purposes they were utilized is problematical.
FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA
When looked at in its entirety, it seems fitting that our trip west across
the United States in search of the ancient giants who once ruled this
42
land should end at the Pacific Ocean. In 1911, it was reported that
William Altmann, assistant curator of the Golden Gate Park Memorial
Museum, found skeletons, pottery, and artifacts in Port Costa,
California, including the skeleton of a giant more than seven feet tall.
Later the same year, Altmann reported finding more giants on an island
in the Santa Barbara Channel, including one skeleton that measured in
at seven feet, four inches tall.
BONES OF SEVEN FOOT CALIFORNIAN
GIANT FOUND IN SOUTH
OAKLAND TRIBUNE, JULY 25, 1911
Ethnologists will be interested in a discovery made by Assistant
Curator William Altmann of Golden Gate Park Memorial Museum—
namely, the fact hitherto denied that the Digger Indians of California
were acquainted with at least the rudiments of pottery making. “Until
now, no pottery of Digger Indian manufacture has ever been found,”
says Altmann, and therefore he highly values the find he made in an
Indian Burial Mound at Concord, in Contra Costa County.
From an excavation made by workmen in the employ of the Port
Costa Water Company has been found a large number of Indian relics
of great age, including the specimens of crude pottery already
mentioned and the skeleton of an Indian giant more than seven feet tall.
The skeleton is in the possession of Dr. Neff of Concord, who is
mounting it for exhibition. The pottery specimens consist of charm
stones of baked clay of spindle shape and pierced so that they may be
suspended from the neck by cords.
In addition, there are a large number of knives and arrowheads of
obsidian or volcanic glass, which is extremely rare in this part of the
state, and leads to the belief they were brought down by the Shasta or
Modoc Indians and traded for other things with the Diggers of Contra
Costa.
A striking peculiarity about these arrowheads is their shape and
pattern. They are notched in a very painstaking way with jagged
division and resemble very much some of the weapons Filipino
warriors use. A stone mortar and several phallic pestles carved with
considerable skill and precision, stone sinkers for fishing, and artistic
43
pipes made of soapstone, together with a quantity of wampum, are
among the souvenirs secured by Assistant Curator Altmann, the donor
being Joseph Hittman of Concord.
The mound from which these relics were taken is close to the
railroad depot at Concord. The work of excavation is still going on and
more interesting finds are looked for.
Fig. 1.3. Indian cemetery, Santa Rosa Island, containing abalone shells carbon
dated at seven thousand years old. The tops of the skulls were painted red;
several skeletons measured over seven feet tall (photo courtesy of Santa Barbara
Museum of Natural History, 1959).
44
Fig. 1.4. Bone whistles from Santa Rosa Island, early to mid-1900s
BEST-PRESERVED SKELETON OF EXTINCT
TRIBE HAULED FROM CHANNEL
OAKLAND TRIBUNE, JUNE 10, 1912
Up to about three hundred years ago, a giant race inhabited the coastal
regions of California. Remains of these people have been discovered in
the islands of the Santa Barbara Channel. To William Altmann,
assistant curator of the Golden Gate Park Memorial Museum, belongs
the honor of discovering one of the tallest and best preserved skeletons
of this extinct tribe. Altmann utilized his vacation a week ago in
excavating an old Indian burial mound in the nursery of Thomas S.
Duane, two miles from Concord, in Contra Costa County.
The giant skeleton found was ten feet from the surface and around it
were a large number of mortars and pestles, charm stones, and obsidian
arrow heads. The giant skeleton has been laid and reconstructed in the
Curator’s office and placed on private exhibition yesterday. The bones
are in a good state of preservation, being hard and firm, although brown
with age. Two or three of the vertebrae are missing and the skull is
broken into three parts.
The skeleton is seven feet four inches. The skull is in great contrast
to that of the Indian today. The under-jaw is square and massive, being
remarkably thick and strong.
PHALLIC CARVINGS
The artifacts are ornamented with phallic carvings, whereas the marks
made by the former and present-day Diggers are not carved or
ornamented in any way. The charm stones are of baked clay, a
beginning of the more advanced works of pottery, which are not found
with Digger remains. This interesting find was made on the Salvadore
Pacheen Ranch, part of which is occupied by Duane’s nursery. It is
Altmann’s intention to make a further exploration of the mound at an
early [date] for other relics of this by-gone era.
A SUPERIOR RACE OF GIANTS ADMITTED IN
CALIFORNIA
45
The find is of the greatest importance to anthropologists the world over,
confirming as it does, the theory originally advanced when the giants
were unearthed in the Santa Barbara Islands, that a superior race of
Indians, both physically and mentally, preceded the Digger and other
native races of the present day. This is evidenced also in the burial
posture and the charm stones found near the body.
46
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1
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Fig. 1.5. Bones of a giant found in southern California (The World, 1895)
47
2
NORTH AMERICA
Land of the Giants
While the idea of prehistoric giants inhabiting the United States may
seem strange to us today or the result of some fantastic hoax, in the
nineteenth century, reports of archaeological evidence regarding giants
were commonplace. In addition, one must remember that America was
an agrarian society at this time and its citizens were in regular contact
with their fields, as well as the mounds and the remains they found
while plowing. Knowledge of the giants was part of the current
thinking, as was a heightened awareness of who the mound builders
really were. As this chapter demonstrates, highly credible reports of
skeletons and artifacts, from the eastern states to the Pacific Ocean,
appeared in newspapers across the country with surprising frequency.
The fact that this idea seems so strange to us today can be directly
attributed, at least in part, to the role the Smithsonian played in
suppressing the evidence, as attested by several of the reports
documented here.
48
Fig. 2.1. Giant skeleton from Serpent Mound of Adams County, Ohio
THE LENNI LENAPE GIANTS OF THE EASTERN UNITED
STATES
The Lenni Lenape Indians were often referred to as a tribe of giants.
Technically, their name translates as “the real people,” or “the human
beings” in the Unami language. Their principle area of inhabitation
encompassed much of southeastern New York State, including the
lower Hudson River Valley and most of Long Island and Staten Island,
as well as eastern Pennsylvania around the Delaware and Lehigh
Valleys, in addition to the coastal regions that extend south to the north
shore of Delaware. Another designation of the tribe was the “original
people,” which is similar to the appellation of the Copper culture tribes
of Michigan, which were called the “Old People,” and the Anasazi of
the Southwest, who were called “The Ancient Ones.” Since their
legends state that they originally migrated from the west, this is not
surprising.
Lenni Lenape legend relates what is no less than a mass exodus that
began west of the Mississippi and involved the use of scouting parties
that went out in search of suitable land. Although the legends are
thought to be several hundred years old, research in chapter 10
49
indicates that this migration may have happened as long ago as 5000
BCE as a result of the cataclysmic explosion of the Lassen Volcano in
California.
Fig. 2.2. Lappawinsa, chief of the Lenni Lenape ( Lappawinsa , painted by
Gustavus Hesselius in 1735, Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Division
Collection)
50
Fig. 2.3. Benjamin West’s painting (in 1771) of William Penn’s 1682 treaty with the
Lenni Lenape Indians. Notice that the seated warrior is taller and whiter than
anyone else present.
An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian
Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring
States, 1819
By Rev. John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder
The Lenni Lenape, according to the legends handed down to them
by their ancestors, resided many hundreds of years ago in a very
distant country in the western part of the American continent.
For some reason I do not find accounted for, they determined on
migrating to the eastward, and accordingly set out together in a
body. After a very long journey, they fell in with the Mengwe
(Iroquois), who likewise emigrated from a distant country. Their
object was the same as with that of the Delawares. They were
proceeding along to the eastward until they should find a country
that pleased them.
The spies, which the Lenape had sent forward for the purpose of
reconnoitering, had discovered that the country east of the
Mississippi was inhabited by a very powerful nation who had
many large towns built on the great rivers flowing through their
land. These people (as I was told) called themselves “Talligew” or
51
“Talligewi.” Colonel John Gibson, however, a gentleman who has
a thorough knowledge of the Indians and speaks several of [the
languages], is of the opinion that they were not called Talligewi,
but Alligewi. And it would seem that he is right, from the traces of
their name which still remain in the country, the Allegheny River
and mountains having indubitably been named after them.
The Delawares still call the former the Alligewi Sipu, the River
of the Alligewi.
MANY WONDERFUL THINGS ARE TOLD OF THIS FAMOUS
PEOPLE
The Lenni Lenape eventually came in contact with the ancestor race of
the Allegheny or Alligewi people, a race even greater in stature than the
Lenni Lenape and known for their massive earthworks throughout the
regions of Lake Erie and Lake Huron. Heckewelder continues:
They are said to have been remarkably tall and stout, and there is a
tradition that there were giants among them, people of a much
larger size than the Lenape. It is related that they had built regular
fortifications or entrenchments. I have seen many of the
fortifications said to be built by them, two of which in particular
were remarkable. One of them was near the mouth of the river
Huron, which empties itself into the lake St. Claire, on the north
side of that lake at a distance of about twenty miles northeast of
Detroit. The other works, properly entrenchments, being walls or
banks of earth regularly thrown up with a deep ditch on the
outside, were on the Huron River east of Sandusky, about six or
eight miles from Lake Erie.
52
Fig. 2.4. Teedyuscung (1700-1763) was known as king of the Delawares. He
worked to establish a Lenni Lenape (Delaware) home in eastern Pennsylvania in
the Lehigh, Susquehanna, and Delaware River Valleys (King of the Delawares:
Teedyuscung 1700-1763, courtesy of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum
Commission).
Outside of the gateways of these entrenchments were a number
of large flat mounds, in which the Indian pilot said, were buried
hundreds of slain Alligewi.
53
When the Lenape arrived on the banks of the Mississippi, they
sent a message to the Alligewi to request permission to settle
themselves in their neighborhood. This was refused them but they
obtained leave to pass through the country and seek settlement
further to the eastward. They accordingly began to cross, when the
Alligewi, seeing that their numbers were so very great, and, in fact,
they consisted of many thousands, made a furious attack on those
who had crossed, threatening them all with destruction if they
dared to persist in coming over to their side of the river. Fired at
the treachery of these people and the great loss of men they
sustained, the Lenape consulted on what was to be done. Whether
to retreat in the best manner they could, or try their strength and let
the enemy see they were not cowards but men, and too high-
minded to suffer themselves to be driven off before they had made
a trial of their strength and were convinced that the enemy was too
powerful for them.
THE MENGWE JOIN IN THE WAR
When the Mengwe, or Iroquois Indians, saw that the Lenni Lenape
were losing the battle, they agreed to fight on their side in exchange for
a promise that they would have a part in jointly ruling the conquered
lands east of the Mississippi. The Alligewi were finally defeated, and it
was said that they fled south down the Mississippi River, never to be
seen again. Again, Heckewelder continues:
54
Fig. 2.5. The giants Fafner and Fasolt seize Freya in Arthur Rackham’s illustration
of Der Ring des Nibelungen by composer Richard Wagner.
The Mengwe, who hitherto had been satisfied with being
spectators from a distance, offered to join them on the condition
that, after conquering the country, they should be entitled to share
it with them. Their proposal was accepted and the resolution was
taken by the two nations to conquer or die.
Having thus united forces, the Lenape and Mengwe declared war
against the Alligewi, and great battles were fought in which many
warriors fell on both sides. The enemy fortified their large towns
55
and erected fortifications, especially on large rivers and near lakes,
where they were successively attacked and sometimes stormed by
the allies.
An engagement took place in which hundreds fell, who were
afterward buried in holes or laid together in heaps and covered
over with earth. No quarter was given, so that the Allegewi, at last
finding that their destruction was inevitable if they persisted in
their obstinacy, abandoned the country to the conquerors and fled
down the Mississippi River from whence they never returned.
PIGEON CREEK VALLEY, PENNSYLVANIA
_ CHARLEROI MAIL, MAY 7, 1953 _
The name “Monongahela” derives from the Indian river title, it being
the name by which the Indian described the falling banks of the river as
soil erosion loosened the earth on its sides and caused it to slip into the
stream. The other two bodies of water also derive their name from the
Indian: Mingo Creek (and the entire Mingo section) and Pigeon Creek.
The Mingoes, with Chicka-Mingo as their Chief, inhabited the
section to the north of what is now Monongahela, while Pigeon was the
Chief of the great tribe which occupied for many seasons the waters of
what is now called Pigeon Creek.
Earlier Indians in this section of the county were “Mound Builders,”
evidences of such still being apparent from the surface in several
places. The “Mounds,” embracing the section surrounding Decker
Street and the old Crall greenhouse property, took its name from the
huge mound at the southern end of Decker Street. Mounds also have
been discovered on the Van Voorhis farm and at a site near Elrama.
The Elrama mound revealed 45 skeletons, giving proof that the
Mound Builders lived here 10,000 years ago.
The late George S. Fisher, Finleyville archaeologist, made
excavations at the site and reported that the largest skeleton was seven
feet five inches in length. The bones, unearthed in pieces, were put
together and sent to the museum at Harrisburg. At a distance of 29 feet
behind the mound, another terrace was apparently a place of sacrifice to
the Diety. Here were found beads, knives, bear tusks, arrow points and
clay ovens.
56
Fisher, during his years as an Indian authority, excavated more than
one thousand skeletons, claims this 1953 article in the local
Pennsylvania newspaper. There were more than one hundred campsites
marked in the immediate district and a number were not yet listed.
GIANT SKELETON FOUND IN PETERSBURG,
KENTUCKY
DAILY NORTHWESTERN, OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN, JULY 8, 1886
At Petersburg, Kentucky, twenty-five miles below here, an excavation
for a new building has brought to light a peculiar find; it being a
strange-looking Indian grave, the receptacle of which has been made of
stone and clay, formed into a kind of cement, about three feet in height,
and fully nine feet in length.
Within the rude vault lay a giant human skeleton that measured
seven feet, two inches, in length. The bones were all of large
proportions, and the monstrous skull, with teeth perfect and intact, was
more than half an inch thick at the base.
A number of copper pieces, evidently worn for ornaments, a stone
pipe, and a quantity of arrowheads were found with the decaying bones.
AMAZING FINDS FROM EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY
In the diary entry below, written in 1792, General John Payne reports
uncovering an ancient burial ground along the banks of the Ohio River
in Kentucky. A total of 110 skeletons were removed, the tallest
measuring in at seven feet tall.
Diary of General John Payne, 1792
From The Natural and Aboriginal History ol Tennessee
by Dr. John Haywood
The bottom on which Augusta is situated is a large burying ground
of the ancients. They have been found in great number and of all
sizes. From the cellar under my dwelling, over 110 skeletons were
taken. I measured them by skulls, and there might have been more
whose skulls had crumbled into dust. The skeletons were in all
sizes, from 7 feet to infant. Dave Kilgour, who was a tall and very
57
large man, passed our village at the time I was excavating my
cellar, and we took him down and applied a thigh bone to his. The
man, if well-proportioned, must have been 10 to 12 inches taller
than Kilgour. The lower jawbone would slip over his skin and all.
A Survey of Archaeological Activity in Tennessee, 1835
In the county of Williamson, on the north side of Little Harpeth, in
the lands owned by Captain Stocket northwardly from Franklin,
are walls of dirt running north from the river and east and west.
In 1821 they were four or five feet high, and in length from the
river between 490 and 300 yards. There is a ditch on the outside all
around, four or five feet in width, partly filled up. Upon the soil,
which has partly filled it up, are black oaks two feet or more in
diameter. A spring of excellent water is in the middle of the
enclosure and a branch runs from it into the river through the
interval left by the wall of its passage. The enclosure contains 40
or 30 acres.
Three mounds are in the inside, standing in a row north to south,
and near the wall and ditch on the north side of the area. All these
mounds are of nearly the same size. Within the enclosure are a vast
amount of graves, all of them enclosed within rocks, and the bones
are very large. James McGlaughlin, who is seven feet high, applied
one of the thigh bones found there to his thigh, and it was three or
four inches longer than his thigh.
OHIO STATE GETS IN THE ACT
The tight-lipped account below concerns a giant skull found by a
museum curator from Ohio State University. This burial is interesting
in that it combines several of the burial motifs previously discussed.
First of all the skeleton was found inside a log hut buried in the mound.
Second, the skeleton’s arms and legs were wrapped in half-inch-thick
bracelets. Third, the skeleton itself was seven feet tall, with a skull
twenty-five inches in circumference.
HUT AND SKELETON FOUND IN BIG MOUND
NEAR CHILLICOTHE
OHIO DAILY GAZETTE, MAY 25, 1897
58
Clarence Loveberry, curator of the Museum of Ohio State University,
has made remarkable discoveries in a large Indian mound. He is
excavating just outside the city limits. Several days ago he found a
well-preserved log hut in the interior of the mound, and yesterday he
found a skeleton of the occupant of the log hut.
The skeleton’s wrists were wrapped with copper cerements,
indicating it to be that of a distinguished person. The skull was at least
half-an-inch in thickness.
SEVEN-FOOTER FOUND IN SALEM, OHIO
HAMMOND TIMES, FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1939
Discovery of ancient skeletons and priceless relics in an Indian mound
in North Benton, northwest of Salem, by two Alliance, Ohio mail
carriers, has brought hundreds of visitors to the scene and attracted the
attention of expert archaeologists. The two amateur archaeologists Roy
Saltsman and Willis Magrath, made the excavation on the farm of John
Malmsberry. After examining the mound, Richard G. Morgan, state
archaeologist, declared that the work of the two Alliance men was the
most important archaeological discovery in this section of the state in
recent years. He estimated the age of the findings at more than 2,000
years old.
One skeleton uncovered was that of a man, apparently a chief,
estimated to have been seven feet tall, whose skull was 25 inches in
circumference.
Other findings included flint arrows, the stones of three sacrificial
altars, spear heads, flake knives and beautifully wrought objects of
copper.
MASS GIANT BURIAL EVIDENCE OF BLOODY BATTLE
This is one of many accounts that report a giant’s jaw was big enough
to fit over that of a normal man. In this case the burial field was thought
to contain between two and three thousand skeletons.
History of Ashtabula County, 1800
The graves were distinguished by slight depressions in the surface
59
of the earth, deposited in straight rows. The number of these graves
has been estimated to be between two and three thousand. Aaron
Wright— made a careful examination of these depressions, and
found them invariably to contain human bones, blackened with
time, which upon exposure to the air quickly crumbled to dust.
Some of these bones were of unusual size, and evidently
belonged to a race aligned with giants. Skulls were taken from
these mounds of which were of sufficient capacity to admit the
skull of a normal man, and jawbones that may be fitted over the
face with equal facility. The bones of the upper and lower
extremities were of corresponding size.
COPPER-HELMETED GIANTS RULE
There have been a number of intriguing finds in Indiana over the years.
The following article describes how an Indiana farmer found eight
skeletons, one clad in copper armor, buried together in a circle.
INDIANA’S EIGHT-FOOT GIANTS WORE
COPPER ARMOR
OAKLAND TRIBUNE, JANUARY 3, 1926
Another discovery was made of eight skeletons, one clad in copper
armor, buried in a perfect circle, made when the Logan Grays, a
military group led by A. M. Jones, were conducting military exercises
in 1888 on a small island on Eagle Lake near Warsaw, Indiana. Under a
flat stone, they discovered a hole that led to the entrance to a secret
cave with the skeleton of a 6'9" giant buried next to a stream that led to
what was called a sacred pool. It is interesting to note that the
dimensions of this secret room are almost identical to one described in
Tennessee, i.e. 25 feet long by 15 feet wide by 8 feet deep, branching
out at the middle to form two rooms.
INDIANA GIANTS FOUND
BONES OF AN INDIAN GIANT
CINCINNATI COMMERCIAL, OCTOBER 7, 1888
60
A member of the Logan Grays, the crack military organization of
Logansport that held its encampment this year at Eagle Lake, near
Warsaw stopped in this city on his way home from camp and told the
following story of the discovery by the party of a cavern on an island in
Eagle Lake; A.M. Jones rowed to a small island near the southwest
corner of the lake and began digging for worms.
He turned over a large, flat stone near a tree, and under it was a small
hole, which was an entrance to a cave. Jones called the boys up, and we
began an exploration of the cavern, which proved to be twenty-five feet
long, fifteen feet wide, and eight feet deep. The walls are of a natural
formation of stone, branching out at the middle so as to form two
rooms.
In the front room was the skeleton of a man six feet nine inches long.
The bones were very large, indicating great strength. Along one side of
the cave runs a small stream of water, as pure as crystal. In the front of
it forms a small pool. In this were a number of bones. Old settlers in
this vicinity of the lake claim that the skeleton is that of Eagleonkie, the
giant Indian chief who lived alone on this island and mysteriously
disappeared during a severe winter. The island was known after this
chief and was once known as Giant Island.
EXCAVATIONS AT ILLINOIS SITES IN 1891
From 1891, we find this news report on skeletons found in the aptly
named city of Carthage, Illinois.
PERFECT GIANT SKELETON FOUND
HAWK EYE, BURLINGTON, IOWA, SEPTEMBER 1, 1891
No little excitement has been occasioned by the discovery on a farm
near Carthage of several skeletons in a mound that are doubtless those
of prehistoric people. In regard to this historic find the Carthage
Republican newspaper will publish the following.
The Sweney Farm Mounds, located near the south line of the farm
quarter, on Section Five, Carthage Township, have been a familiar
landmark to the oldest citizens since, and the quarter was entered by
Samuels in 1836, or thereabouts.
61
Last Saturday afternoon the new owner of the Sweney Farm Indian
Mounds was plowing on one of his mounds when he hit a series of
sandstone blocks. On the removal of several sandstone rocks embedded
in the ground, the owner Mr. Felt procured a spade and proceeded to
dig out the rocks with some difficulty.
On the removal of these rocks there was revealed an almost perfect
skeleton of a man of very large size. The authorities of Carthage
College have secured permission to investigate the find to its fullest
extent and Rev. Dr. Stephen D. Peet has been notified.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE IN 1892 CONFIRMS RACE OF GIANTS
This definitive report states that the entire country lying between the
Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, between Galena and Cairo, is
honeycombed with Indian mounds.
HUNDREDS OF BURIALS
CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 1892
Near Carthage, Illinois, about one year ago, a mound was plowed up
and the bones, principally the skulls of human beings, were found in
sufficient quantities to warrant the conclusion that hundreds of people
had been buried there. From measurements taken of some of the skulls
and principal bones, it was decided that the persons buried were of a
race of giants. Some of the femur bones measured 1914 inches, and the
measurements of the skulls and other bones indicated that these people
must have attained an average of seven to eight feet in height.
The entire country lying between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers,
between Galena and Cairo, is honeycombed with Indian mounds and
mounds that are believed to be the handiwork of a pre-historic race.
Nansook County, especially in localities bordering the Mississippi
River, is covered with evidences of Indian burials and their mounds are
very numerous. Some interesting discoveries have been made.
Some of the best descriptions of the finds of the mound builders are to
be found in county and state historical society reports. This one from
1902 reports the discovery of fields of mounds along Lake Michigan,
as well as along related rivers, creeks, and lakes, with the skeletons of
62
giants uncovered measuring between seven and eight feet in height.
The History of Lake County, Illinois, 1902
These mounds were quite numerous along the rivers and in the
vicinity of the inland lakes. That they were of great antiquity is
evident from the fact that huge trees had come to maturity upon
their summits and were awaiting the ax of the pioneer.
Excavations of these piles of earth have revealed the crumbling
bones of a mighty race. Samuel Miller, who has resided in this
county since 1835, is authority for the statement that one skeleton,
which he assisted in unearthing, was a trifle more than eight feet in
length, the skull being correspondingly large, while many other
skeletons measured at least seven feet. There were extensive burial
grounds on the shore of Lake Michigan, mainly south of the
Waukegan River, also at various points all through the county.
Many of the skeletons found near the lake shore were of an
unusually large size.
THE LARGEST NEOLITHIC BURIAL SITE IN THE WORLD—
THE DICKSON MOUNDS MUSEUM (ILLINOIS)
In 1930, newspapers across the country ran half-page photos of more
than fifty skeletons laid out on various dirt platforms in the middle of a
large archaeological dig, led by the University of Chicago. It was a
truly riveting photo and was used in many year-end features as one of
the top stories and photographs of the entire year. Eighty-three years
later, in a museum at the site, there is no mention of what was then
called “the largest Neolithic burial site ever discovered in the world.”
The story of Don Dickson and his mounds could serve as a
microcosmic primer for many of the stories pertaining to the recovery
of ancient bones and the true history of America. In this case, the
political correctness fallout that resulted in the Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) laws once again being
misapplied eventually led to a once-thriving tourist destination being
shut down and the skeletons it exhibited being buried by a local Indian
tribe who have no genetic relation to the skeletons they claim to
protect.
To give a little background, Don Dickson, a chiropractor from
63
Lewiston, Illinois, grew up on a farm about ninety miles south of
Peoria that was intersected by the Illinois River. In 1927, Dickson was
plowing on a hill near the river, and he broke through to a layer of clay
and gravel that he immediately recognized as an ancient Indian burial.
Dickson then spent the next two years excavating the site, most
famously with the help of the University of Chicago in 1929 and 1930.
What they found and how they left it became a national news story.
In short, instead of removing 248 skeletons, they exposed them to the
air by removing all the dirt surrounding them and leaving them in situ
to be photographed and visited like some colossal ancient boneyard
sideshow. In all, it was estimated that the site contained well over three
thousand burials, and the University of Chicago was calling it the
largest Neolithic burial site in the world.
Fig. 2.6. Don Dickson (courtesy of Illinois State Museum)
In the early 1930s, Dickson constructed a building to house the
exposed skeleton field and opened the site to tourists. In the first year
he had forty thousand visitors, and the whole venture became a national
tourist destination, as people loved being able to see these large
skeletons displayed in situ—though in all probability not in their
original, and far more bizarre, burial positions.
64
Dickson successfully ran the tourist operation until 1945, when he
sold the mounds to the state of Illinois, who made the site part of their
state museum system in 1965. The Dickson Mounds averaged about
seventy-five thousand visitors a year, who were exposed not only to the
skeletons, but also to a history lesson on the mound builders and their
extremely ancient history in the area.
All of that came to an acrimonious end beginning in 1990, when
Native Americans began to petition and protest that the site be shut
down and sealed and that the skeletons should be reburied under
NAGPRA, which was then brand new. The NAGPRA laws mandated
that all Indian relics and skeletons be returned to their rightful tribal
owners. After several years of battle in court revolving around
ownership issues pertaining to the lack of genetic associations of the
skeletons to the current local tribes, among other controversial subjects,
the Indians won out and the mound exhibit was shut down and sealed in
1992. The site remained closed for the next two years, as the tribes
involved reburied an undisclosed number of skeletons found at the site,
which ultimately is known to have contained more than three thousand
burials.
When the “renovated” museum reopened two years later, without the
open boneyard exhibit, interest in the site as a tourist attraction
immediately disappeared, and although the site remains opened to this
day, it generates very little interest from the public in regard to its new,
cleaned-up, skeleton-free existence.
SMITHSONIAN INVOLVEMENT IN THE DISAPPEARANCE OF
GIANT SKELETONS FOUND IN WISCONSIN INDIAN
MOUNDS
It is hard to imagine today, but the historical record is filled with vivid
descriptions of how Wisconsin and Minnesota were like the Nazca
Lines of burial mounds, so it comes as no surprise that giants have been
turning up there for a long time.
This case covers the involvement of the Smithsonian at a Wisconsin
site in the 1880s and a collection of ancient skeletons of giants called
the Stoddard Collection, so it is of particular interest to our study of
that museum’s long-standing policy of burying the evidence when it
comes to proof of ancient giants ruling America in extreme antiquity.
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FIFTY SKELETONS UNEARTHED—REMAINS
OF GIANT ABORIGINES DISCOVERED
LA CROSSE TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 4, 1912
More than fifty skeletons of the ancient mound builders were unearthed
Saturday from five mounds in the town of Stoddard, by a party of
Normal students and professors, who made a special trip to investigate
them. Valuable relics were also recovered that will be on exhibition at
the Normal museum.
The country around La Crosse has long been known as the center of
Indian activities in centuries long past and as evidences of this fact
there are many Indian mounds in this vicinity.
About thirty years ago agents of the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington D.C., investigated several mounds in what is now the town
of Stoddard. They unearthed much valuable material in the line of
skeletons, arrow heads, and spear heads from the first few of a chain of
a dozen mounds and at the present time there is in Washington a
Stoddard Collection of Indian relics.
Since that time Smithsonian officials have often considered opening
more of the mounds but nothing has been done. Spurred on by the
generous offer of A. White, who owns the ground on which are located
five large mounds, to donate the contents to the Normal School
Museum (apparently no help from Smithsonian officials), the Normal
authorities recently took the matter up, and several local citizens
generously provided a fund for the expenses of an expedition to unearth
the contents.
A SIX-FOOT, SIX-INCH SKELETON
UNEARTHED
Professors A. H. Sanford and W. H. Thompson of the University of
Wisconsin Department of History, and L. P. Deneyer of the Geology
Department, together with a company of thirteen students left on
Saturday morning with shovels to examine the ancient graves.
Professor Austin and some of his students surveyed and made a contour
map of the field determining the dimensions of the mounds and the lay
of the surrounding country. The expedition was of a scientific
66
character, and the results of the investigations will appear in printed
form.
A large mound in the center, probably the grave of an Indian chief,
was adjoined by two smaller ones on each side. The latter were
investigated first and the efforts of the diggers were rewarded at once
by the unearthing of a skeleton about five feet down, which measured
six and a half feet in length.
The skull was very large being eight inches in diameter from ear to
ear. The teeth were well preserved, but the other bones quickly fell to
pieces. The first mound yielded eleven skeletons. The second contained
only charcoal and burned bones indicating cremation.
EFFORTS YIELD MANY SKELETONS AND
ARTIFACTS
The middle mound, which was the largest, required much effort to
excavate. More than twenty skeletons were found besides the bowl of a
clay peace pipe, a copper arrow head, copper skinning knife, a
sandstone spearhead, and several flint arrow heads. The fourth
eminence yielded over twenty five skeletons, pieces of clay pottery,
and a bear’s tooth. The last mound, after digging about six feet down,
brought up a large spear point of quartz with a red coloring design on
each side. Adjoining the White farm is property owned by Homer Hart
of La Crosse on which are located several more mounds.
GIANT INDIAN BONES: DISCOVERY OF AN
EXTRA ORDINARY SKELETON NEAR FOND
DU LAC
FOND DU LAC BANNER, JUNE 6, 1899
An Indian skeleton was dug up on the farm of Matt and Joseph Leon,
one mile south of St. Cloud on Saturday. There is nothing strange in
finding an Indian skeleton, but this one was a giant in size, his frame
measuring seven feet. He must have been a man of note among his
people, for he was buried in a large mound, sixteen handsome arrows
surrounding his body. The skull was brought to this city and is on
exhibition in one of the Main Street windows.
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THE WINONA, MINNESOTA, TEN-FOOT
GIANT
THE HISTORY OF WINONA COUNTY, 1883
Indian mounds and relics are found in various parts of this township.
Not long since, while some men were digging in Mineral Bluff, some
one hundred and fifty feet above the river, a skeleton of unusual size
was unearthed. On measuring, the skeleton was found to be ten feet in
length, with other parts in proper proportion. In the skull was found a
copper hatchet and a dart or arrow-head nine inches long. Another
skeleton, nine feet long, was found in the village of Dresbach, while
some men were digging a road or trench. These skeletons were of an
unusual size to those generally taken from Indian mounds. Their size,
form, and structure would lead those well versed in paleontology to
believe they belonged to a race prior to the Indian. In many mounds
have also been found copper hatchets, chisels, and various kinds of
tomahawks and other weapons of war; also these antique races seemed
to have had some process for hardening copper unknown to any
modern process.
Where they came from, when they lived, and from whence they have
gone, is only conjecture and speculation. That they were mighty races,
skilled in the mode of warfare, understanding the mechanical arts, for
all these we have conclusive evidence. But of their final end we know
nothing.
DOCUMENTED DOUBLE DENTITIONS FROM IOWA
Throughout the Indian lore of giants are also stories of skulls being
found with double rows of teeth, called double dentitions. (See also
“Double Dentitions” .! While there is often controversy regarding these
claims, here is a modest and convincing story.
DOUBLE-TOOTHED GIANT
JOURNAL TRIBUNE, WILLIAMSBURG, IOWA, APRIL 27, 1900
The discovery in Hardin County a short time ago by Joseph Booda and
Elliot Charles Gaines of innumerable mound builders’ relics, and the
subsequent finding, by other parties, of the remains of a man of the
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prehistoric period, have greatly interested scientists in other parts of the
country, the chief among these being Curator Charles Aldrich, of the
state Horticultural Society.
Assuring himself of the truthfulness of the various newspaper
reports, Mr. Aldrich has arranged to be in Eldora next month and begin
a careful and systematic exploration of some of the mounds in the
vicinity, the legal permission having been obtained.
In a large show window in Eldora for several days has been
exhibited the skeleton of the man, which was found in a mound on the
banks of the Iowa River, near Eagle City, six miles north. It has caused
much interest and wonderment. Although well preserved, it is estimated
that the skeleton is many centuries old. The skull is very large and
thick, fully a quarter of an inch. A set of almost round double teeth are
remarkably well preserved. They are yellow with age, are perfect in
shape, and appear to have been double, both above and below. The
femurs are very long showing a giant in stature.
Dr. N. C. Morse, a prominent physician who examined the skeleton,
pronounced it that of a person who had evidently been trained for
athletics, as the extremities were so well developed.
THE BOODA COLLECTION
Joseph Booda, who has taken much interest in mound exploration, has
a rare collection of implements of the stone age, all found near Eldora.
Among these are pottery axes, arrows, beadwork, pestles, mallets, and,
although he has offers for the collection, will not part with it, unless he
may be induced by Curator Aldrich to loan the collection to the state, to
be placed in the historical building in Des Moines when completed.
GIANTS IN MIDDLE AMERICA
IOWA GIANT: SEVEN FEET, SEX INCHES
OAKLAND TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 20, 1925
Out of a mound in Iowa was dug the skeleton of a giant who, judging
from the measurement of his bones, must have stood six inches over
seven feet high when he was alive. In another there was a central
chamber containing eleven skeletons arranged in a circle with their
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backs against the walls. In the midst was a huge sea shell which had
been converted into a drinking cup.
GIANT IN MISSOURI
_ OAKLAND TRIBUNE, JANUARY 3, 1926 _
Within the last few weeks it has been reported from Missouri the
discovery of the skeleton of a man who was a trifle more than seven
feet, two inches tall. Frank Plumb, a student of archaeology who made
the find, reported discovering inside the skull a pear-shaped stone such
as the Mayas placed in the mouths of their dead.
The article below, which appeared all over Texas and the nation in
1931, omits all information about the size of the skeletons in an
obvious effort to hide the skeletons’ actual heights. It is standard
practice for all archaeologists to give heights for any skeletons they
discover.
INDIAN GRAVES ARE OPENED IN TEXAS
TWENTY-FIVE HUMAN SKELETONS DUG UP
AND GIVEN TO MUSEUMS
_ REVIEW-MINER, JUNE 19, 1931 _
Waco, Texas: Twenty-five complete human frames, those of Indian
Braves and Squaws and their papooses with such of their possessions as
have survived burial, have been unearthed near here and today are in
the museums of three Texas schools.
The twenty-five bodies were placed in the burial mound, each facing
East, more than 100 years ago. They were discovered by Dr. K. D.
Aynesworth thirty miles west of here in Coryell County. The mound
was explored by The Department of Anthropology and Archaeology of
The University of Texas.
The first of the three layers of bodies was only 21 inches below the
surface and the second layer was just below the first. The third tier was
36 inches deep. Beside the bodies of the women were the large rock
bowls and the round-headed clubs they used to grind corn. Arrows and
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spearheads of flint were found near the bones of the men. One bone
knife, ten inches in length, its back notched, was found by the side of
one brave.
THE BONES ARE DIVIDED AND GIVEN OUT
The bones were divided between the State University at Austin; Baylor
Women’s College at Belton; and Baylor University here.
SMITHSONIAN RUSHES TO NORTH DAKOTA
FIND
MINNESOTA EVENING TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 18, 1963
(Associated Press ) Kathryn N.D.: The remains of an Indian woman,
judged by some to be at least 1,000 years old, have been unearthed
from a burial mound on the Vincent Zacharias farm four miles east of
here. The skeleton was found about two feet below the surface. The
body had been buried in a sitting position and nearly all the skeletal
bones were found intact.
Two men from the Smithsonian Institution visited the farm recently
and made an analysis of the skeleton. They estimated the remains were
those of an Indian woman about 23 to 25 years of age and that she had
been buried about 1,000 years ago.
ANOTHER DAM DESTROYS ANOTHER
ANCIENT VILLAGE
STANDARD EXAMINER, AUGUST 7, 1959
Ogden, Utah: Evidences of a group of Utah natives who had no housing
problems were uncovered by earth-moving machinery at the Willard
Bay Dam this week. A bulldozer scraped off the top of an Indian
mound in which artifacts and a human skeleton were found. Bureau of
Reclamation men stopped work at the site and notified the University
of Utah.
James H. Gunnerson of the archaeology department of the university
visited the area Tuesday with Robert Robinson of 665 Polk, a field
engineer with the bureau. Mr. Gunnerson said the remains were those
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of a group of Pueblo-type Indians who inhabited the area from AD
1000 to 1200.
“From signs and artifacts, there had been a village of several dirt
houses at the site,” the Utah University man said.
THEY WERE FARMERS
The Utah scientists said these people were farmers, who raised corn,
squash and beans. They had a certain culture, he said, which was
indicated by a piece of broken pottery with a decorative line around its
rim.
The skeleton was complete, except for the skull. Mr. Robinson said
that the scientists estimated the skeleton was that of an adult about 5
feet 10 inches in height, somewhat taller than average for this race of
early Indians.
An employee at the University of Utah yesterday quoted Dr.
Gunnerson as saying the archaeology department has no plans for
further exploration at the Willard dam site.
THE DEATH VALLEY TEMPLE OF THE GIANTS
This story from the Nevada News relates how Dr. F. Bruce Russell,
following up on reports that the Smithsonian had hidden evidence of
giants found in Death Valley, eventually uncovered a complex of
thirty-two caves in a 180-square-mile area around the Nevada-
California-Arizona border. Inside the complex of caves, he reported
finding the skeletons of eight- and nine-foot giants dressed in animal
skins that had been tailored into jackets and pants that resembled
“prehistoric Zoot-suits.” Russell also reported finding hieroglyphics,
extensive weapons, religious artifacts, and cooking utensils, and at the
end of a hall leading from the main temple he said there was a room
filled with the well-preserved remains of dinosaurs, saber-toothed
tigers, imperial elephants, and other extinct beasts paired off in niches
as if on display.
ATLANTIS IN THE COLORADO RIVER
DESERT
NEVADA NEWS, 1947
72
Near the Nevada-California-Arizona border area, 32 caves within a
180-square-mile area were discovered to hold the remains of ancient,
strangely costumed 8-9 foot giants. They had been laid to rest wearing
the skins of unknown animals similar to sheepskins fashioned into
jackets with pants described as “prehistoric Zoot-suits.” The same
burial place had been found 10-15 years earlier by another man who
made a deal with the Smithsonian. The evidence of his find was stolen
and covered up by Darwinian scientists.
Dr. F. Bruce Russell had come to Death Valley from the east coast
for the sake of his health. He had taken up mining in the west and was
exploring across the Colorado River into Arizona. What he found he
described as the burial place of a tribal hierarchy within the ritual hall
of an ancient people. He felt that some unknown catastrophe had driven
them into these caves. All of the implements of their civilization were
there, including household utensils and stoves. Dr. Russell reported
seeing hieroglyphics chiseled on carefully polished granite within what
appeared to be a cavern temple. Another cave led to their sacred hall,
which contained carvings of ritual devices and markings similar to
those of the Masonic Order. A long tunnel from this temple led to a
room where, Russell said, “Well-preserved remains of dinosaurs, saber-
toothed tigers, imperial elephants, and other extinct beasts were paired
off in niches as if on display.”
Ten to fifteen years earlier the caves had been seen by another miner
who had fallen from the bottom of a mineshaft. In his book. Death
Valley Men, Bourke Lee related a conversation among residents of
Death Valley concerning the local Paiute Native American legends of
an underground city at Wingate Pass. After falling through the ceiling
of an unknown tunnel, the miner had followed it 20 miles north of the
Panamint Mountains to discover a huge ancient underground city. He
saw arching stone vaults with huge stone doors and a polished round
table in the center of their council chamber, which had once been lit by
ingenious lights, fueled by subterranean gases.
Leaning against the walls were their tall gold spears. He said that the
designs on their thick golden armbands resembled the work of the
Egyptians. The tunnel ended at an exit overlooking Furnace Creek
Ranch in California’s Imperial Valley. He could see from there that the
valley had once been underwater. The tunnel entrance had been a dock
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or a quay located halfway up the side of the mountain. A deal was
made with the Smithsonian Museum for the find, but the miner was
betrayed by his partner. The evidence was stolen and the entrance
concealed. In a 1940 mining journal, another find was reported of much
worked gold found in an 8 mile long cave near San Bernardino.
University of Arizona professor Vine Deloria, himself a Native
American, made a similar accusation against the Smithsonian for
covering up the remains found within the burial mounds of the
Moundbuilder civilization. Surviving diaries from before the time of
Darwin attest to these discoveries. The Moundbuilders were a different
civilization than that of the Indians, they said. The mounds contained
the remains of hundreds of giants along with the bones of giant
mastodons. In Cincinnati, Ohio, the giant bones were found with large
shields, swords, and engraved stone tablets. In Kentucky and Tennessee
the bones of “powerful men of towering stature” were excavated. One
of these 7-foot men was buried with an engraved copper plate beneath
his head. A woman was also found. She was wearing a silver girdle
with letters written on it. The Detroit Free Press reported in 1884 the
discovery in Gartersville, Mississippi, of the remains of a giant with
waistlength jet-black hair. He was wearing a copper crown. With him
in his timber burial vault were his children who wore garments
decorated with bone beads. The tomb was covered with large flagstones
engraved with inscriptions. In Cayuga Township, Niagara, there is a
place called “The Cemetery of the Giants,” which was discovered in
1880. Those giants were nine feet tall and appear to have died violent
deaths. Their axes were found with them.
Giant bones were also unearthed from a rock fissure on Lake Erie
Island. In some of the finds of giant bones, the bones lay in confusion
as if left on a battlefield. The Smithsonian does display some artifacts
of the Moundbuilders found with the bones of the giants: shell discs
and carved stone beads. Many of the bones turned to powdery ash
within a short time of being exposed to the air. The Smithsonian has
been reluctant to test some less fragile finds. The late Vine Deloria said
that it is because they “Might find a really early date for the bones” and
that it would be distressing: distressing to their Darwinian time-line.
SMITHSONIAN REMOVES 564 SKELETONS IN
74
KERN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
FIND ALSO CONTAINS FOUR THOUSAND
SPECIMENS OF ANCIENT INDIAN LIFE
BAKERSFIELD CALIFORNIAN, MARCH 28, 1934
More than 4000 artifacts and hundreds of Indian burials have been
excavated at the site of the Tulamni Company lease near Taft during
the past three and a half months. It was revealed here today with the
announcement that the camp of workers, supported by federal funds,
will all be dispersed by Friday.
The archaeological projects, which have employed varyingly from
190 to the 26 men retained to make the final surveys, have been
directed by Dr. W. T. Strong and W. M. Walker, assistant, from the
Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution with Dr.
Edwin F. Walker as archaeologist and W. R. Wedel as assistant
archaeologist. In the opinion of the directors, two more months could
be spent excavating the Kern Indian Mounds.
The artifacts uncovered, classified, and shipped to the Smithsonian
Institution include mortar and pestles, flint points, bone tools, textiles,
shells, and soapstone beads and other ornaments, stone vessels, and
fragments of basketry.
A total of 564 skeletons were uncovered in the burial mounds, of
which 348 were taken from the first mound. Not all the skeletons found
were considered good specimens. One of the last to be uncovered had
been interred in a round hole with the body flexed grotesquely to make
it fit the chosen grave. Three thousand specimens were uncovered in
the first mound and 1,000 from the second mound, which was conceded
to be much older in time than the first.
DOCUMENTING THE FINDS
A topography map of the mounds and the excavation area has been
made by Pavey L. Stanley of Bakersfield, who headed one of the
excavation crews, and it will be filed with the collection at the
Smithsonian.
Mr. Walker is returning to Washington D.C. and will study the local
collection and write a report on the finds for the Smithsonian Institution
75
that will make clear Kern County’s contribution to filling in the larger
picture of pre-historic human life on the American continent.
SKELETONS OF EARLY INDIANS ARE
UNEXPECTEDLY UNEARTHED
LOS ANGELES HERALD EXAMINER, JANUARY 20, 1930
Students of early California history have turned their attention to the
discovery of an early Indian burial ground near Carpinteria, uncovered
unexpectedly by a crew of workmen making a cut through a cliff for a
road to the beach. Some of the traditional Indian burial customs were
revealed as the great steam shovel tore open the graves. The skeletons
were found lying face down, foreheads resting on surfaced stones, with
arrowheads, cooking utensils, and other articles buried with them. The
story of the savages’ graves was related in Los Angeles by George A.
McDonald, local broker, on whose property the burial ground was
uncovered by a drilling crew engaged in running a road to the beach for
oil-drilling work.
SCORES OF SKELETONS
For 80 feet from the place where a steam shovel started digging into the
edge of the cliff, which drops straight to the ocean’s edge, skeletons of
Indians were uncovered by the score, according to McDonald. In the
majority of the graves the Indians were lying on their faces, their heads
toward the west. In one grave a mother and her child were discovered,
the mother had one arm half-circling the infant. Close by was the
skeleton of a brave. Imbedded in his forehead was an arrow, one which
undoubtedly struck him down during battle more than a century ago.
Hundreds of arrowheads, a number of grinding and mixing bowls,
and other articles were buried with the bodies. Many of the skulls have
been removed from the property with the permission of the owner.
When Roscoe Eames, drilling superintendent, encountered the old
burial ground he immediately halted excavation and made a
preliminary investigation. He asked McDonald for permission to
continue, and given the right, resumed building the road to the edge of
the cliff and throughout the entire distance turned up many of the
skeletons.
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HUNDREDS OF SKELETONS, SOME
STICKING OUT
When word was received of the discovery at Carpinteria, classes from
nearby schools were dismissed to visit the old burial grounds and to
study the various finds. According to McDonald the cemetery may
stretch many feet out and around the road under construction, and
hundreds of skeletons probably would be found if that entire area were
excavated.
Parts of skeletons could be seen sticking out over the edge of the
newly excavated portion of the road, and these were pulled out of the
ground by members of the steam shovel crew and tossed in a heap.
Sightseers removed the pieces. McDonald owns the property and for
many feet into the ocean fronting the old burial ground. The oil well
will be drilled out in the ocean and within a stone’s throw of the
cemetery.
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3
HOW OLD?
Clues from Mastodons and Carbon Dating
One of the most amazing aspects of the findings related to the
prehistory of America is their extreme antiquity. The dates of early
finds were often estimated based on the ages of trees that had grown up
over previously inhabited sites, such as in the following excerpt from A
History of Miami County, Ohio, 1880. As testing became more
sophisticated with carbon dating and other analyses, the dates of the
finds kept getting pushed back, from hundreds to thousands of years.
Scientists are now getting dates of 14,000 BCE for some of their finds
in the Americas.
There were several mounds, which indicate the existence, in this
locality, of a prehistoric race. The largest of these earthworks
embraces about two acres in extent, and is some three feet high.
Various pieces of workmanship found upon the spot, such as
arrow-heads, pieces of pottery, and images carved upon stone, go
to prove that these people were not totally unacquainted with the
fine arts, and that they possessed more than the ordinary
intelligence of the Indian.
Upon this mound a human skeleton was plowed up, which,
although badly decayed, was judged, by those who examined it, to
have been that of a man at least seven feet in height. An ash tree,
more than one hundred years old, growing on one of the mounds,
shows that they must have been built at a period of time very
remote from the present.
At other sites, careful archaeological study resulted in estimates of a
few thousand years before, such as the discoveries of the Iowa
Archaeological Survey in association with the WPA mentioned in the
following article from 1935 or those of the State University of Iowa, as
described in the 1958 article.
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IOWA INHABITED FOR AT LEAST TWO
THOUSAND YEARS
BY RAY E. COLTON, ARCHAEOLOGIST
IOWA ENTERPRISE, ESTHERVILLE, IOWA, AUGUST 21, 1935
Thousands of years before the arrival of the white pioneers to what is
now Emmet County, Iowa, there inhabited in this section of Northern
Iowa, a strange race of people whom science has named the “mound
builders.” Evidence of this race has been found at various points in
north central Iowa, especially along the shores of Lake Okoboji, and
other bodies of water, such as creeks and rivers. These artifacts, in the
shape of arrow heads, pottery, spear heads, axes, and some human
skeleton remains give to archaeologists the story of this strange race
that is believed to have antedated the white pioneers by at least 2,000
years.
Traces of extinct fortifications, burial, ceremonial, and effigy
mounds have been found near Milford and Spirit Lake, in Dickinson
County, and a line drawn east and west along Emmet and Kossuth
counties. These mounds, and other artificial tumuli could have been
erected only by the mound builders, as they are known to have been the
only cultured race of ancient times of the North American continent
capable of erecting these works of antiquity. Owing to their erection of
these mounds, the term “mound builder” has been applied to their race
and culture.
EXCAVATION OF PREHISTORIC IOWA
VILLAGE
_ MORNING SUN NEWS HERALD, AUGUST 14, 1958 _
The first excavation of a pre-historic Indian village in Iowa has
revealed pottery and some stone tools which indicate the village was
established some 3,000 years ago. Although the artifacts are not the
oldest found in Iowa, the discoveries 80 inches below the surface of the
ground may be considered a major archaeological find, according to R.
79
J. Ruppe, State University of Iowa assistant professor of sociology and
anthropology. Dr. Rnppe is directing a field expedition of 16 SUI
students on the Indian village site located east of Wapello near
Toolesboro in Louisa County.
The site, on a 200-foot-high bluff overlooking the Iowa River, is near
a series of large burial mounds where extensive archaeological
exploration was carried out in the 1870s by the Davenport Academy of
Science. The prehistoric village site was called to Dr. Ruppe’s attention
after a roadway was cut through the bluff and large black stains in the
clay hill indicated it was the site of a number of storage pits, which the
Indians filled with broken pottery, flint chips, charcoal, bones, and
other trash.
The 3,000-year-old crumbly pottery called “Marion-thick,” is
extremely thick and coarse tempered. Excavation will be continued
through the summer to determine whether the village site may have
been inhabited even earlier than 1000 BC. “We’re not sure yet how
deep we’ll have to go to before we hit a ‘sterile’ level where there are
no further artifacts,” Dr. Ruppe said.
He explained that the materials found at the various depths show no
single, extensive period of occupation to indicate intermittent
occupation from 1000 BC to 1400 BC. The articles found at the 30-inch
depth indicate that the Indians who used them belonged to the “early
Woodland period,” which followed from 500 BC. Other artifacts are
dated in the “Hopewell period,” which followed from 500 BC to AD
500. Artifacts close to the surface are of the “late Woodland period” of
500 to about AD 1400. A broken pottery vessel about 20 inches in
diameter and estimated to be 1,400 years old was found by the students
at Lake Odessa, several miles from the village site. They have
reconstructed about half of the cordmarker, mud colored vessel. “It is
one of the few found with all the broken pieces in one place,” Dr.
Ruppe said.
Thousands of artifacts have been found since the group of SUI
students began digging at the village site. In one pit, 4,268 flint flakes
were uncovered. Also found were arrowheads, fragments of smoking
pipes, fish scalers, various types of bones, much charcoal and obsidian,
and a type of volcanic glass used in making tools. Each item, when
discovered as the students shave a quarter of an inch of earth with their
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trowels, is recorded on maps to show exactly where and at what depth
it was found. After being carefully cleaned and labeled, all items are
sent to SUI to be analyzed further this fall in the classroom. From this
information the students will be able to reconstruct the lay-out of the
village and gain an insight into the Indian culture.
After carbon dating was developed, truly mind-boggling results
emerged, as the articles quoted below make clear. The results have
been reinforced by some startling finds that indicate the coexistence of
the giants with mastodons, which became extinct some twelve thousand
years ago.
HILLTOP DIG NEAR BUFFALO 11,000 YEARS
OLD—AREA’S ANCIENT INHABITANTS
PROBED ON PHOENIX HILLTOP
BY STEVE CARLIC, STAFF WRITER
_ SYRACUSE HERALD AMERICAN, APRIL 3, 1983 _
It’s just about time to dust off the buckets, break out the pickaxes and
take another look at North America’s earliest residents. They lived just
down the road from the village of Phoenix—11,000 years ago. Last
summer anthropologists from the Buffalo Museum of Science spent
several weeks digging on a hilltop near Route 264 about four miles
north of the village. They plan to return May 16 to June 4, to dig again.
Michael Gramly, curator of anthropology at the museum, said residents
are invited to join in the dig. By studying the hundreds of arrowheads,
stone flakes and stone tools found at the site, Gramly hopes to shed
light on the mysterious Paleo-Indian people, believed to be the first
inhabitants of North America.
The dig site is located on a knoll that provides a view of the Oswego
River valley. Gramly believes the site provided hunters with a view of
approaching herds of animals migrating south. He said 1,400 artifacts
were discovered last summer at one site. At least five Paleo-Indian
campsites have been identified at the Phoenix site; only one was
excavated by his team of 10 to 15 volunteers and adult education
students from Buffalo. The nature of the artifacts and the relative
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scarcity of them leads Gramly to believe the hilltop was a temporary
hunting camp, a place where prehistoric hunters spent two or three
weeks during warm weather. Diggers, supported by the National
Geographic Society, spent last year sifting dirt from a 275-square meter
plot. “The area has been extensively plowed in the past, but that did not
disturb the site too much,” Gramly said. The site was excavated
thoroughly last year and the team is returning this spring to investigate
a second of the five campsites.
“We’ll be doing the same thing as last year,” Gramly said. “We need
two areas excavated thoroughly to compare the two. It’s possible that
the people returned to the area in a different season, which would be
evident in certain differences and we’ve got similarities of the sites.
The Phoenix site has been known by anthropologists for decades, but
digs were never undertaken for various reasons.” A large number of
arrowheads and other artifacts discovered by local farmers encouraged
Gramly to conduct the dig.
Artifacts discovered last year were cataloged. Gramly has lectured
on his findings and a scholarly paper will be written in November that
describes his findings.
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SITES IN THE COUNTRY
In the mid-1970s, excavators removed over twenty thousand artifacts
from a dig in the general area of the Delaware Valley, which dated
back to 9000 BCE at the earliest and showed thousands of years of
continuous habitation.
PALEO-INDIAN CULTURE IN THE
DELAWARE VALLEY
BY JOE RATTMAN
POCONO RECORD REPORTER, AUGUST 30, 1975
Archaeologists digging near here have discovered indications of a
Paleo-Indian culture in the Delaware Valley no later than 2,000 years
after the last glacier receded northward around 9,000 BC. Dr. Charles
W. McNett Jr., an archaeologist at the American University in
Washington, said fluted points he found at a site he is excavating,
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confirm that the site’s nomadic inhabitants were the first people to live
in the area after it was no longer covered by ice.
“Several of my colleagues have said they think this is the most
important Paleo-Indian site in the East, if not in the country,” McNett
said.
The Paleo-Indian artifacts were discovered under eight to ten feet of
soil, sand and silt beneath artifacts of more recent cultures on a fertile
flood plain of the Delaware River adjoining the Delaware Water Gap
National Recreation Area. The 11,000-year-old find this summer
predated finds last summer dated to 8800 BC.
MORE THAN TWENTY THOUSAND
ARTIFACTS REMOVED FROM SITE
“More than 20,000 artifacts were found last summer alone at the site,”
McNett said. The river flooded several times over the centuries,
gradually building up the soil and placing layers in between the
artifacts that indicated occupations at various different times.
“It is not clear where the Paleo-Indians came from but it is
speculated that they migrated from western Pennsylvania where they
seemed to be living around 14,000 to 15,000 years ago,” McNett said.
Some of the oldest spear heads ever found were discovered in the
Pee Dee Basin in the South Carolina counties of Florence, Darlington,
Marlboro, and Marion. The oldest of these spear points are of Clovis
origin and have been carbon-dated to 10,000 B.C. In addition, these
points were found in association with mammoth and mastodon kills. In
addition to the spear points, some of the oldest pottery ever discovered
comes from South Carolina. It is what is called “fiber-tempered”
pottery and it was found in association with polished stone tools,
various scrapers, projectile points and lithic material.
THE PEE DEES OF SOUTH CAROLINA DATE
TO 8000 BC
FLORENCE MORNING NEWS, AUGUST 4, 1974
Bob Durrett, a Francis Marion College senior majoring in history, has
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just completed a comprehensive study on the early Indians of the Pee
Dee. In his study, the young archeologist focused on the Archaic Period
of the Indian culture of the Pee Dee dating from 8000 to 1500 BC.
Being, for the most part nomadic, the Archaic Indians moved along
river areas in the Pee Dee basin in search of food, probably sheltering
themselves in rough huts of saplings or hides. Occupational sites from
this culture were studied in four South Carolina counties: Florence,
Darlington, Marlboro, and Marion.
According to Durrett, the people of the Pee Dee have always been
aware of the past existence of the Indians of this region. “Farmers have
found the artifacts in their fields,” he said. “However, people
mistakenly associate these artifacts with the historic Indians of early
colonial America. In reality, Indians could have lived in this area of
South Carolina as early as 12,000 years ago,” he added.
SOUTH CAROLINA CLOVIS SPEAR POINTS
KILLED MAMMOTHS AND MASTODONS
Durrett bases this opinion on the fact that, in South Carolina, Clovis
spear points have been found like those found in the Southwest, which
are associated with the bones of now extinct mammoths and
mastodons. Carbon-14 dates taken from the pre-historic kill sites of
these huge animals go back to about 10,000 BC. Therefore, according
to Durrett, since the spear points from the Southwest and from South
Carolina are so similar, it is perhaps reasonable to assume that the age
of the Clovis artifacts in this state would be close to those from the
Southwest, perhaps earlier.
MAMMOTHS AND MASTODONS IN SOUTH
CAROLINA
In addition, archeological findings reveal that mammoths and
mastodons existed in South Carolina and remains of these animals were
found in Darlington County in the 1840s. It was the ancestors of the
Archaic Indians, known as the Paleo-Indians, who exploited the large
game. Archaics hunted smaller game and added fish, grain, and
vegetables to their diets. In his writing, Durrett tries to relate the
artifacts to their culture: it was with the Archaic Indians that the
“grinding stone” and polished stone tools appeared. In addition, bone
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pins have been found that were probably used to prepare clothing from
hides. It is thought that certain of the “dart or lance” projectile points
were used to kill, then to butcher and dress bone or hide. One such
artifact was found in a field across from the FMC campus and many
have been found in this area. “Artifacts of the polished stone tool are
relatively scarce in this area,” said Durrett. “However,” he added,
“many early pot shards from the late archaic period have been
discovered in the Pee Dee, this due to the fact that pottery is well
preserved in this climate and soil. The pottery of the late-Archaic
Indians was fiber-tempered; that is, plant fibers were added to the clay
to make it stronger. One of the most common fibers used was the
Palmetto fiber, which easily molded with the clay.”
EARLIEST POTTERY DATES IN AMERICA
“The earliest dates,” Durrett stated, “that have been found on the fiber-
tempered pottery in North America come from South Carolina.”
Durrett’s collection of Pee Dee artifacts includes samples of polished
stone tools, various scrapers, projectile points, and lithic material.
Durrett has included pictures of many of the artifacts with his paper. In
his paper, Durrett also includes a word on the importance of preserving
Indian artifacts. He warns readers against “pot-holing” or going to
historic and prehistoric sites and indiscriminately digging for artifacts.
“Once these artifacts are removed from the context in which they are
found, if no careful techniques and cataloging are undertaken,” said
Durrett, the value of the material is gone forever as far as gaining
information. There is no monetary value to the artifacts. “Their value
lies in the insight they give into our historic heritage,” he said.
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Fig. 3.1. View of the eastern face of the Pee Dee Basin excavation under the drip
line (photo by Mark McConaughy)
CARBON DATING PUTS FIND AT UP TO 14,225
BC
INDIANA EVENING GAZETTE, JULY 3, 1976
Recent archaeological digging at a cave near Avella, in Washington
County, and carbon-14 testing of cave materials, indicate that the
prehistoric Indians of our area date to about 14,225 BC. Don W.
Dragoo, Curator, Section of Man, Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh,
states that fluted points of the Indian period, dated approximately from
16,000 to 6,000. Most of them have been surface finds, except for one
area along the Conemaugh River near Blairsville, which he believes
may have been a campsite of these ancient peoples.
SMITHSONIAN INVOLVEMENT IN THE 1880S AND 1890S
In an Associated Press story from 1997, reporter Anthony Breznikan
interviewed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about the ten thousand
artifacts he had removed from an area of western New York since 1993
in his capacity as a head archaeologist for the Mercyhurst College
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Archaeological Institute and the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum
Commission.
ASSOCIATED PRESS, JULY 29, 1997
“Humans have lived at this site as early as 12,000 years ago,” said Dr.
Adovasio about the flatlands near the Allegheny River 90 miles south
of Buffalo, New York, “when they followed retreating glaciers north.
The first year-round residents were the Hopewell tribe from 100 to 500
CE.
“In the late 1800s, archaeologists from the Smithsonian Institution
found Hopewell burial mounds in the area. There were many tribes in
Pennsylvania who seemed to be imitating what the Hopewell were
doing, but the artifacts from these burial mounds appeared to be real.”
MARYLAND OCCUPATION DATES TO 10,000
BCE
SITES BEING DESTROYED AT AN ALARMING
RATE
_ ANNAPOLIS CAPITAL, MAY 13, 1981 _
There is abundant evidence of man’s presence in Maryland for 10,000
years or more. Along the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries are more
than 10,000 significant Indian occupation sites. In Anne Arundel
County alone nearly 700 sites have been recorded and given permanent
identifying numbers by the Maryland Geological Survey. These sites
are being destroyed ... at an alarming rate. Simple pole barns and
houses on piers did much to preserve a site. The early farmer with
horse drawn plow did little damage to Indian ruins, even though they
are usually so thin so as to be contained entirely within the plow zone.
But with the advent of the tractor and earth leveling machines,
concerned groups of preservationists watched with a little dismay.
However, since this was a necessary part of the farming that gave us
the free time for our pursuits, not many objected. But in the early 1960s
with the mass movement to the suburbs and especially, the waterfront,
the time for real concern became apparent.
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MOUND BUILDER SITES HAVE NOT FARED
WELL
_ NEW YORK TRIBUNE, 1874 _
Indian ruins have not fared so well. From Wayson’s Corner to Ft.
Meade, nearly every shred of gravel has been removed for road
building and other construction uses.
Some of those Indian sites extended a quarter mile and farther from
the river edge and all the artifacts that once lay there undisturbed for
thousands of years, are now in roads, driveways and concrete. We
found an Archaic (2000 BC) Indian ax about 20 years ago that was
dumped on a Deale driveway. The gravel was from the Patuxent River.
Several Indian artifacts were recovered from St. Helena Island in the
Severn River. They were found eroding from a decaying concrete
bulkhead that was built in the early 1930s. The gravel in the concrete is
of the type and color found along the Davidsonville area of the
Patuxent. Near Rose Haven in extreme southern Anne Arundel County,
a housing development was planned on an Indian site that has been
nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.
DEVELOPER ALLOWS A DIG BEFORE
DESTRUCTION
The developer was very generous in allowing the Archeological
Society of Maryland Inc. and its chapters to conduct a test excavation
in 1977. About 80 people participated in the dig over a period of 10
days. After finding much cultural material, mostly Middle Woodland,
(400 BC-AD 400) we found that the primary site was in no immediate
danger since it was in a low area encompassed by the so-called 100-
year flood plain. We abandoned the project at this point. It is our hope
the site will remain forever undug. The longer a site remains
untouched, the longer archeologists of the future will have to observe a
ruin without its having been destroyed and just written about.
OBSERVATORIES, ALLIGATOR MOUNDS,
AND GRAVES
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Some [mounds] have the appearance of military structures, and others
look as though they were built as observatories, while others seem to be
designed for religious or burial purposes. Some mounds have the form
of birds, serpents, alligators, and other animals. The “old fort” at
Newark, has a mound in the center several feet high and about fifty feet
long, built in the shape of an eagle with spread wings.
Fig. 3.2. Alligator effigy mound in Ohio, built circa 950 CE
NOT BARBARIANS
It was certainly no barbaric skill that could have traced out those
perfect circles, surveyed those rectangles and octagons, much less
controlled the tens of thousands of laborers that must have been
necessary to construct these earthen walls and mounds.
But it is all a mystery. One can only wonder that such a mighty
people should so completely pass away as to leave no trace of their
history but these piles of earth.
SIGNIFICANT FINDS AT THE MEADOWCROFT
ROCKSHELTER
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The Meadowcroft Rockshelter in western Pennsylvania has recently
come into prominence as one of the oldest verified archaeological sites
in the United States. Although no skeletons have been recovered from
the rock shelter, it must be born in mind that two documented
excavations of skeletons in the area predate the rock shelter finds by
fifty years. They tell us in no uncertain terms who these people were
and what they looked like.
In addition, fossilized bits of bone have been reclaimed from Paleo-
Indian, Archaic, and Woodland Indian sites, and radiocarbon dating has
revealed continuous use and possible occupation from 17,000 to 14,000
BCE and right up until the present. Digging at the site has gone down
11.5 feet to obtain these results, this being the first site in the Americas
that was dug down past the Clovis levels to reveal Solutrean projectile
points that predate the Clovis points by thousands of years. Clovis
points and other bifacial (two-sided) objects like scrapers have also
been recovered, as well as flint from Ohio, jasper from eastern
Pennsylvania, and shells from the Atlantic coast, showing that these
people engaged in widespread trade in the extremely ancient past.
The Meadowcroft Rockshelter site was first discovered and
excavated from 1973 to 1978 by an archaeological team from the
University of Pittsburgh led by James M. Adovasio, Ph.D., perhaps the
main academic in the forefront of the study of what are called Paleo-
Indians, or what should more accurately be referred to as the extremely
ancient settlers of the Americas. Not only has Adovasio been at the
forefront of the excavations at this site, but he has also been active in
the dating and reclamation of the bog mummies in Florida (see chapter
10). He has published his findings in an excellent book called The First
Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeology’s Greatest Mystery. But despite
his expertise in the areas of this study, Adovasio has remained silent on
the subject of the previously discovered skeletons, which is odd, as it
directly relates to his life’s work. Perhaps, like most of the others in the
academic field of archaeology, he is simply unaware of the finds or has
been brainwashed into believing these old finds were all part of some
ongoing hoax. But the only hoaxers are at those at the Smithsonian and
the major universities and museums across America who are involved
in the ongoing suppression of scientific evidence crucial to
understanding the true history of this country.
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Fig. 3.3. Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County, Pennsylvania, is a
national historic landmark and was first occupied more than 14,000 years ago by
pre-Clovis people (photo courtesy of Indiana University of Pennsylvania,
Department of Anthropology).
Because of the scientifically confirmed, carbon-14-dated extreme
antiquity of the area, as proven by the work of the team at the
Meadowcroft Rockshelter, led by Adovasio, the fact that significant
skeletons were recovered from this area fifty years ago takes on added
significance.
The first skeleton was discovered by William Jacob Holland and his
assistant. Holland was the main curator at the Carnegie Museums of
Pittsburgh from 1896 to 1922 and was considered the most prestigious
anthropologist and archaeologist in the state at that time.
THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM CLAIMS
POSSESSION OF AN EIGHT- TO NINE-FOOT
GIANT
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, NOVEMBER 22, 1920
Dr. W. J. Holland curator of the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh and his
assistant Dr. Peterson, a few days ago opened up a mound of the
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ancient race that inhabited this state and secured the skeleton, who,
while in the flesh, was from 8-9 feet in height.
The mound was originally about 100 feet long and more than 12 feet
high somewhat worn down by time. It is on the J. B. Secrest farm in
South Huntington Township. This farm has been in the Secrest name
for more than a century. The most interesting feature in the recent
excavations were the mummified torso of a human body, which the
experts figured was laid to rest at least 400 years ago.
“Portions of the bones dug up and the bones in the leg,” Prof.
Peterson declares, “are those of a person between eight and nine feet in
height.” The scientist figures that this skeleton was the framework of a
person of the prehistoric race that inhabited this area before the
American Indian. The torso and the portions of the big skeleton were
shipped to the Carnegie Museum. Dr. Holland and Peterson supervised
the explorations of the mound with the greatest of care. The curators
believe the man whose skeleton they secured belonged to the mound
builder class.
The second very major find from the immediate vicinity of the
Meadowcroft Rockshelter was of a cache of forty-nine skeletons that
were discovered in Washington County at another mound in the 1930s.
The story of this discovery was accompanied by photos of bones,
skulls, and teeth, and one of the accompanying photo captions notes,
“Archaeologists are amazed at the excellent condition of the teeth.”
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Fig. 3.4. A fanciful early illustration of our descent from giants.
THUNDERBIRD IMAGES DATE BACK TEN THOUSAND
YEARS
As we pull back the curtain of the true history of the Americas, the first
thing that we discover is that many popular, iconographic images that
we associate with the American Indians find their roots in the much
more ancient culture of the mound builders. A case in point is the
classic image of the thunderbird. At a site along the Shenandoah River,
estimated to be over one mile long, effigy mounds in a number of totem
styles, including the thunderbird, were uncovered that date back to
10,000 BCE. Giant burials were found in association with these sites,
as well as numerous artifacts, including Clovis point arrowheads.
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Fig. 3.5. Dr. Kenneth Campbell with the reconstruction of a teratorn, the largest
bird to fly; it could reach speeds of 150 miles per hour.
EXTREMELY ANCIENT HISTORY OF
VIRGINIA INDIANS
THUNDERBIRD FACTORY SITE MAY BE
OLDEST IN NATION
BY NED BURKS
STAR STAFF, FEBRUARY 6, 1984
Front Royal: Along the floodplain of the South Fork of the Shenandoah
River, about seven miles south of Front Royal, lay the remains of a
primitive “factory” that was thriving in the valley long before modern
industry came to Warren County.
It is called the Thunderbird site, and archaeologists who have
examined stone artifacts found there say the area was used by a Paleo-
Indian culture for the manufacture of hunting and butchering tools
almost 12,000 years ago.
The site also contains the oldest evidence yet discovered of a house
structure in North America, and evidence gathered there over the past
13 years has allowed archaeologists to construct a working model of
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one of the oldest known civilizations on this continent.
Amateur archaeologists began to discover Indian artifacts at the site
in the 1960s, and their find came to the attention of William Gardner, a
professor of anthropology at Catholic University, in 1969. Gardner and
his assistants soon discovered that their predecessors had barely
scratched the surface of what would become one of the most important
archaeological finds in the eastern United States. Gardner is completing
a book on the prehistory of the Middle Atlantic Region of North
America, in which he is incorporating much of the information he has
gathered from the Thunderbird excavation.
He became so fascinated with the area that, with the help of a
number of graduate students, he has been excavating and mapping the
site ever since.
EXTREMELY ANCIENT DISCOVERY A
TOTAL SURPRISE
The “dig” is undisturbed now because of winter weather but excavation
will continue next summer.
When Gardner began work on the site with the help of a National
Geographic Society grant in 1971, it did not take him long to realize
how significant the Thunderbird excavation would be. He thought at
first that the artifacts at Thunderbird were strictly from a “surface
scatter,” similar to so many other sites discovered in the east.
Surface scatters are clusters of stone chips and projectile points that
remained in the plow zone of the soil and were frequently disturbed by
farmers who settled the valley in modern times, Gardner said. To his
surprise, he discovered that the stones at Thunderbird were much older
than he had anticipated, and that the site was more than just a
temporary stopping point for nomadic Indians who roamed the
Shenandoah Valley for food.
“After taking off all the disturbed soil in the plow zone we came
down on stains in the ground where posts had been driven,” Gardner
said. “That was the first evidence, and so far really the only evidence,
of a house structure at this time period. It really threw us for a loop.” It
turned out that Gardner and his crew had stumbled on what had once
been a traditional Indian camping ground, first established between
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10,000 and 9,000 BC.
Using carbon dating, Gardner discovered that a piece of charcoal
found on the site dated to about 8000 BC. He knows the site was
probably in use for almost 2,000 years before that, because certain
distinctive spear points known as Clovis points also were found near
the river. Clovis points discovered in the western United States have
been dated as early as 9500 BC, and Gardner’s student Bob Verrey has
called them “the hallmark of the Paleo-Indian period,” the oldest
known period of human habitation in North America.
Gardner said that the Indians who occupied the Thunderbird site
could confidently be dated to 9500 BC because of stylistic similarities
between the spear points found here and elsewhere. “It’s like taking a
piece of furniture and saying. This is Colonial,”’ he said.
Gardner also stated that the number of stone chippings found on the
site, and the fact that the chippings have been found at varying depths
beneath the surface, indicates that the area was used more or less
continuously over a period of 2,000 years as a center for making stone
hunting and cooking tools.
Further excavation and a painstaking system of mapping, which
involves leaving stone chips and projectile points at exactly the level at
which they are discovered, allowed Gardner and Verrey to construct a
working model of the culture of the earliest known inhabitants of the
region. Gardner calls archaeology “history without a written record.”
Studying the Paleo-Indian culture in the Shenandoah Valley is
complicated even more because no human or animal remains have been
found at the site. Gardner explained that the well-drained, acidic soils
in the Shenandoah Valley have caused all animal and vegetable matter
of the period to decay without a trace. Even in the drier soils of the
West, no human remains from the period have been found.
Consequently, archaeologists are left to make deductions about the
early inhabitants of the valley based almost entirely on the evidence of
stone artifacts and the patterns in which they are found.
“Though the Indians who once roamed this land in search of deer,
elk, and moose remain faceless, certain things can now be said about
their lifestyle with some certainty,” Gardner said. “The valley would
have been attractive to them, with its plentiful supply of game and fresh
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water. Thunderbird was an ideal place to be in the winter, because the
food options were better (than farther north). With the river, you can
always break through the ice and get fish and turtle. Sooner or later the
animals will come down there too.
“Even more important for the Indians than the abundant game were
the outcrops of jasper, an American flint rock that jutted from the cliffs
just across the river from the Thunderbird site. Jasper was a stone
highly valued by the early Indians because it was especially well suited
for making high quality stone tools and weapons. Large piles of stone
chippings found at the site indicate that the Indians used the area as a
quarry reduction station, whittling rocks down to portable size before
making the finished products: knives and spear points for the men who
did the hunting, and scraping and cooking tools for the women who
prepared the food.”
Gardner and Verrey hope to learn more about these early Indians.
Excavation at the Thunderbird site will continue for at least four more
years, when Gardner’s ten-year excavation rights to the site expire. The
land is owned by Thunderbird Ranch Hunt Club. Together with
ongoing research, including the search for more carbon dates that will
allow Gardner and Verrey to pin down the oldest date of settlement
more precisely, the site is being used to train students. Despite the
amount of time spent on the project, a great deal more work remains to
be done. By the end of last summer excavation on one household area
had been completed, but Gardner estimated there are at least twenty
such areas that remain to be unearthed.
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Fig. 3.6. A bird mound, surrounded by a stone circle, from The Prehistoric World
by E. A. Allen
ANCIENT THUNDERBIRD SITE IS ONE MILE
LONG
ONLY 2,400 SQUARE FEET DUG OF ONE-MILE-
LONG SITE
“The Thunderbird site is almost a mile long, and we’ve dug maybe
2,400 square feet,” Gardner said. “We’ve opened a few small windows
in a house of 10,000 windows.” The Thunderbird Museum and
Archaeological Park, which houses many of the artifacts discovered at
the Thunderbird site and other Indian sites in the Northern Shenandoah
Valley, is closed for the winter, but will reopen in mid-March. It is just
off U.S. 340, about seven miles south of Front Royal.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE FAMOUS ELEPHANT PIPE
This detailed account comes from the Chicago Tribune. The report is
very thorough and covers the excavations of a series of mounds in
which were found various burials and a large number of artifacts, the
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most amazing being the elephant or mastodon pipes illustrated by
Davis and Squier in Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, the
first book ever published by the Smithsonian.
One of the most impressive earthworks found during this Iowa
excavation was the remains of a six-acre octagon with curving sides
and a passageway on the western side that led to a freshwater spring.
To give you an idea of the vast extent of some of these sites under
investigation, in this report on the Iowa dig, it is reported that a general
survey of the area revealed the presence of thousands of mounds that
went on for miles and the remains of what is described as a large,
ancient city.
GENERAL SURVEY REVEALS THOUSANDS
OF MOUNDS
CHICAGO TRIBUNE, AUGUST 18, 1889
A party of relic hunters, including this writer, arrived one fine morning
in early autumn in the region of mounds lying to the north of
Toolsboro. Those Mound Builders were a strange race of people. This
continent was theirs before the arrival of our modern red man, and their
high type of civilization is a cause of wonderment. Their origin, their
date, and their disappearance are explained only by theory and
conjecture.
Here on this majestic bluff of the Mississippi we are surrounded by
huge, unnatural and remarkable elevations of land, undoubtedly the
work of human hands, and of so distinctive a character that not even the
famed works at Newark or Circleville will excite more archaeological
interest.
Just on the outskirts of Toolsboro is the inclined mound known
locally as “The Old Fort.” Still, it does not appear to have been erected
for defensive purposes. To class it as a sacred enclosure would be more
in harmony with the theories advanced by scientific men who have
made a study of the similar earthworks in the Ohio Valley. As an
indication that it was not originally designed as a fortification, we
observe that its plan of construction is more ornamental than practical.
It was built carefully—not hurriedly—and without regard to strength of
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position and, further, it is an isolated specimen of an enclosure
earthwork. If it was designed as a fortification for practical use in the
time of war, there would be other fortifications, or vestiges of war in
the immediate neighborhood.
A NORTHEAST LINE OF FORTIFICATION
MOUNDS WALLED THE EMPIRE
The line of defense of the Mound Builders extended from New York
State diagonally across the country to Wabash, which conclusively
proves that the hostilities encountered from the race came from the
Northeast, and there was no occasion for a fort in the region.
This enclosure, the only one of importance west of the Mississippi
and probably the most unique on the continent stands without
counterpart, while the various geometric forms of squares and circles
represented by Newark or Circleville are common to other sections of
the mound region of the Ohio Valley.
The earthen embankments are now somewhat obliterated, but can
still be distinctly traced, the angles and bastions exhibiting the form of
an octagon, the sides of which are curved inwards, and enclosing the
area of half a dozen acres. A lane or passageway originally extended
back from the west side of the enclosure several hundred feet to a
spring, which has long ceased to be in existence, though it is
remembered by local settlers.
Within the enclosure great quantities of pottery, flint chips, arrow
points, polished stone axes and tomahawks, occasional pipes, and
copper implements and other articles have been picked up from time to
time and found their way into museums and collections.
EIGHT STALWART SENTINEL MOUNDS
Standing upon the margin of this, the highest and most precipitous of
the Mississippi river bluffs, are eight stalwart sentinel mounds, drawn
up in a line as though zealously guarding through the ages the sacred
enclosure just behind. They are conical in shape with a terraced
summit; their height is from twenty to thirty feet and their
circumference from 60 to 100 feet.
Our first day here was consumed in a general survey of the mound
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region, which, in addition to the above, includes several thousand burial
mounds, some large and some small, extending along the bluffs for
miles; and one must naturally conclude that this was the site of a
densely populated mound builder’s city. Early the following morning,
while at work on the mounds, two of the largest were attacked
simultaneously. Human remains were first discovered in Mound 1.
When the earth was cleared away exposing the skeleton, it became
apparent that the individual had been buried in a sitting posture facing
towards the rising sun. The skeleton was that of a man of medium
height (very rare); around the neck was a string of shell beads, while
scattered about the remains were numerous arrow points and two small
stone axes. The cranium was of the short-headed type, the forehead less
receding and the crown less dome-shaped than that of the modern
Indian. Nothing of consequence was exhumed from Mound 2.
Mound 3, disclosed a perfect skeleton, within a few feet of the apex,
which was readily identified as an intrusive burial, and proved to be the
remains of a representative American Indian. Intrusive burials are not
of uncommon occurrence, as the Indians, feeling an innate reverence
for the mounds, frequently appropriate them for their own sepulchers.
The practice confused early investigators, but from what is now
definitely known of the burial habits of the two races, the question may
easily be decided.
The Indian remains were carefully removed and the excavating
proceeded. At last the original occupants of the mound were unearthed:
two figures in a sitting posture facing eastward. The practice of placing
the remains in this position was a common though not universal custom
of the mound builders, and is one of the points of evidence on which
archaeologists base their opinion regarding them as a race of sun-
worshippers.
From this mound were secured relics which would indicate an age
somewhat more advanced than shown by Mound 1.
The knives and hatchets were of hammered copper; some being
wrapped in a cloth of coarse texture, though exhibiting skilled
workmanship, which only could have been preserved for so many
centuries by the chemical action of the copper with which it had lain in
contact.
101
Copper beads and a copper bracelet adorned one of the skeletons.
Two finely-carved pipes of catlinite—of curved base variety—one
representing a bird with eyes of pearl and the other an animal of
questionable description, together with other specimens of less
consequence were discovered.
TWO WORLD-FAMOUS MASTODON PIPES
ARE FOUND
During the remainder of the week several more mounds were explored
and numerous interesting relics of that pre-historic age were added to
our collection.
Here it was in the immediate neighborhood that the two elephant
pipes—now world famous—were found, furnishing the strongest proof
of the antiquity of man on the continent. These pipes, carved from solid
stone, representing the form of the elephant or mastodon —the only one
ever known —were both found in Louisa County, Iowa and both are
now to be seen in the museum of the Academy of Sciences at
Davenport.
These pipes show beyond a reasonable doubt that the mound builder
and the mastodon were contemporaneous. Their genuineness has been
called into question, to be sure, but the severe criticism to which they
were subjected only proves their value and importance. Their
genuineness is attested by scholarly men of the highest character.”
102
Fig. 3.7. Elephant pipe, from Iowa, illustration from Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis
On the more traditional front, archaeologists have uncovered
evidence of advanced culture and mining activities in Wisconsin dating
back to at least 9000 BCE. At sites like Oconto and Osceola, copper
artifacts, including spears, arrow points, knives, adzes, gouges,
fishhooks, and harpoons have been found in association with textiles,
drilled beads, and even bone flutes that can still be played.
OCONTO SETTLED RIGHT AFTER ICE AGE
BY JOHN NEW HOUSE
WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL, DECEMBER 13, 1963
“Dating of the Old Copper Culture, also tells us that the Paleo-Indians,
who preceded the Old Copper Culture, arrived shortly after the
disappearance of the last glacial age in the state,” explained Warren
Wittry of the Wisconsin State Historical Society.
The date of the last glacier has been determined as about 11,000
years ago, again by use of the “atomic calendar” (carbon-14 dating)
method. The material tested in this instance consisted of wood from a
spruce swamp in Manitowoe County that had been flattened by the last
glacier. The Paleo-Indians hunted now-extinct bison, elephants, the
North American horse, and camels in this country, with those in
Wisconsin hunting the bison and probably the mastodons or mammoths
of that day. “We have found their tools: a distinctive type of arrow,
without the fluting of later Indians and a small flint incising tool with a
sharp point. What we hope to find are these tools in association with
bones of bisons and mastodons from that period,” said Wittry.
“ROYAL” BURIALS AT OCONTO
“Burials at Oconto were in pits just large enough to receive the bodies
of the dead, which were put in a variety of positions. Some were flexed,
with knees under chins. Some were extended, face up or face down.
Some of the pits contained bones and several of these had copper
instruments of spatula form but with sharp edges. The supposition is
that they were used to dismember the dead before cremation,” Wittry
observed.
103
Some pits contained burials in the flesh, as shown by the related
pattern of the bones, with bundle burials on top.
AtV fO WHKMi
OUKlAl PITS
CMMAT/vM PITS
tiOHPU HUM A L
FUXtO SUMAl
e*TXNUlD HUMM
TFATUM
STAFF
SCAIF
ft
I-
! Akca U
Q
n
Fig. 3.8. Diagram of the Oconto County, Wisconsin, archaeological dig site
Fig. 3.9. (left) Hopewellian ear spools and bead ring made of copper (courtesy of
the Field Museum); (right) Hopewellian copper headdress (courtesy of the Field
Museum).
104
“Apparently the Indians waited until a member of the group died in
the spring, to dig the grave, then put in the bundles of bones of those
who had died during the winter,” explained Wittry.
The burials in Oconto were about 2Vi feet below the surface. One pit
contained the body of a woman and a child about 2 years old. At the
base of the child’s neck was a whistle made from the tibia of a deer.
Markings and placement was distinctive.
“One of the big thrills for an anthropologist came later when I
discovered that this was only the fourth such whistle to be discovered,”
said Wittry. “Two of the other known whistles were found in Kentucky,
and one of them was found in the same manner: placed at the base of
the neck of a small child.”
OCONTO SETTLEMENT REMAINS DATED AT
5,600 YEARS
The date at which at least one group of Indians of the Old Copper
Culture lived in Wisconsin has been established as 5,600 years ago,
with a leeway of only several hundred years one way or the other as a
safety margin. Called one of the most important findings in state
anthropology in recent years, the dates were arrived at through the
newly-discovered radioactive carbon-14—sometimes called the
“atomic calendar”—method of computing age of once living materials.
FORTY-FIVE SKELETONS EXHUMED FROM
TWENTY-ONE BURIAL PITS
TWENTY-YEAR-OLD BOY MAKES DISCOVERY
The burial ground was discovered in June, 1952, by Donald Baldwin, a
13-year-old boy digging in the wall of an abandoned gravel pit near
Oconto. The Oconto County Historical Society immediately acquired
the land and kept it under guard, preserving it from vandals and
souvenir hunters.
The site, when excavated, yielded bones of 45 individuals in 21
burial pits with the bones in fair to good condition.
“Luckily the burials were in sand over gravel,” noted Wittry. “So the
drainage was good and the conditions for preservation excellent.”
105
OLD COPPER CULTURE SITE AT POTOSI
The Oconto burial ground of the Old Copper Culture is the second
found in the state. In 1945, erosion on the banks of the Mississippi
River near Potosi revealed the burial ground of about 500 individuals.
The bones were in a trench, some 20 feet wide and 70 feet long,
under a cover of black sand about five feet deep.
8,500-YEAR-OLD CAMPSITE FOUND NEAR
GREEN BAY
ASSOCIATED PRESS, GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN, JULY 3, 1959
An Indian camp site which may have belonged to the earliest Indians
yet known in northeastern Wisconsin has been uncovered in the town
of Scott, Brown County, not far from the east shore of Green Bay. The
site, which is being excavated, was found by Ron Mason, curator for
exhibits at the Neville Public Museum, and his wife, Carol. Both are
anthropologists. Mason says everything points to the Scottsbluff
Indians, who roamed the Plains States from 6,500 to 8,500 years ago.
Mason compared the Scottsbluff period of 6,500 to 8,500 years ago,
to the Old Copper Culture site at Oconto. So far, the Old Copper
Culture Indians have been the earliest known Indians in northwestern
Wisconsin. Two carbon readings have been made at the Oconto site.
They fixed the age of fragments at between 5,500 and 7,500 years.
SMITHSONIAN REMOVES TONS OF
ARTIFACTS AND SKELETONS FROM
ALABAMA CAVE
ANCIENT ALABAMA CAVE NOW OPEN TO
TOURISTS
ALTOONA MIRROR, MARCH 13, 1986
Russell Cave, Alabama, is open to visitors and study of the 9,000-year-
old home of the Stone Agers has moved into the laboratory. The cave
on a wooded mountainside near Bridgeport is man’s oldest known
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habitation in the southeast. From at least 7000 BCE to as late as 1650
CE, generations of primitive huntsmen found ready-made shelter there,
a mild climate, clear fresh water, and a forest full of game.
The Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic Society
explored and excavated the cave several years ago. It is now a national
monument.
FIVE TONS OF ARTIFACTS
From a deep working trench, Carl F. Miller of the Smithsonian
excavated five tons of artifacts: stone projectiles, arrowheads, fish
hooks, bone awls and needles, shell ornaments, human skeletons,
animal bones, and the ashes of ancient campfires. Much of this material
has been catalogued and studied by the Smithsonian. In a separate
project, the National Parks Service has enlisted the aid of several
universities to classify animal bones from the new trench.
NEW MEXICO TRADE TIES WITH
CALIFORNIA
BY HAL BORLAND
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS, OCTOBER 26, 1930
Fast year a joint expedition of the University of Minnesota and the
Archaeological Institute’s School of American Research excavated a
large area in the Mimbres Valley-Cameron Creek section of
southwestern New Mexico. There they discovered skeletons, pottery,
jewelry, weapons, food, and other relics of a race whose history is
believed to extend more than 2,000 years.
Not the least interesting among the finds were shell bracelets and
beads identified with the Gulf of California and indicating commercial
connections with the West and the South.
This year further exploration of the ruins was carried on by an
expedition from Beloit College. Professor Paul Nesbit placed the first
period of the Mimbres people at 2,500 B.C., placing them as one of the
earliest known American civilizations. These investigations uncovered
more evidence of commerce, including a beautifully cast copper bell
said to be symbolic of the Central American culture.
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GRUESOME RITES OR A HORRIBLE
MASSACRE
Other ancient relics were found in the Lowry Ruins of southwestern
Colorado last summer by the Field Museum Archaeological Expedition
to the Southwest, led by Dr. Paul Martin.
A year and a half ago Dr. Martin announced the discovery of a
hitherto unknown savage culture in ruins in that area, more modern,
however than those explored earlier this year. There he found a grim
ceremonial room literally heaped with skeletons—and other evidence
of gruesome rites—or of a horrible massacre.
COLORADO KIVA PRESERVES 3,000-YEAR-
OLD PAINTINGS
This year Dr. Martin worked on two kivas, or ceremonial rooms, one
built on top of still older ruins. Remains of these houses and pottery of
cultured design representing a highly-advanced Indian tribe were
discovered.
“Then,” says Dr. Martin, “we penetrated to the lower kiva, where we
found that paintings on its walls had been preserved more perfectly
than paintings on the room above.” The lower kiva was estimated by
Dr. Martin to date back about 3,000 years.
GYPSUM CAVE FINDS DATE FROM 30,000 TO
20,000 BC
MORE DAM DESTRUCTION OF
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES
BY HAL BORLAND
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS, OCTOBER 26, 1930
The most startling find of the year, however, was that of Dr. Mark
Harrington in an expedition to Gypsum Cave, near Las Vegas, Nevada,
for the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles. Working in an area that
will be submerged by water impounded by the projected Hoover Dam,
the party first came on darts from an atlatl, a weapon that preceded the
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bow and arrow. With these darts they found the skull of a giant ground
sloth, which was known to be of great antiquity. Then the excavators
set about searching for evidence that man had visited the cave before
the sloth.
Eventually they found a patch of real charcoal, presumably from a
campfire, under a layer of unbroken strata of the Pleistocene Era, in the
top most of which was found remains of the Basket Makers. Other
discoveries included numerous bones of the ground sloth, the tiny
skeleton of a prehistoric horse, and scores of broken darts and points of
obsidian and flint, parts of weapons used by primitive men of that time.
At the bottom lay the remains of the campfire.
This seeming link between man and sloth is regarded by many
scientists as the most important proof of man’s antiquity in America yet
brought to light. The sloth is known to have become an extinct mammal
20,000 years ago. This pushes the probable time for America’s earliest
man back thousands of years further than any reliable previous
estimates. It places man in America, in fact, in glacial times.
LEE CANYON, ARIZONA, DINOSAUR
PICTOGRAPHS
These finds in Gypsum Cave were forecast a few years ago by the
discovery of a series of remarkable pictographs in Lee Canyon in
Arizona. Samuel Hubbard, who discovered them said:
“The pictographs included one of an elephant attacking a man, the
first elephant drawing by prehistoric man ever found in the United
States, as far as this writer knows. Another was of a group of animals,
undoubtedly of the ibex, a two-horned antelope still found alive in the
mountains of Asia, whose bones have been discovered in European
caves but trace of which has never before appeared in the New World.
The third, and most valuable, is a pictograph of an animal quite
evidently intended to represent a dinosaur.
“The elephant in America dates back at least 30,000 years. The
dinosaur belongs to an even earlier tropical era going back millions of
years before that. Yet, there in Lee Canyon are pictures of both the
elephant and the dinosaur, chipped in the rock by prehistoric man.”
EVIDENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
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There must have been great climatic changes in this thirsty land since
these thousands of people lived here. Today there is not an ounce of
water to be found anywhere—just a great burned up, heaved up, dried
up waste.
Such a great population must have had water and such a population
could not have subsisted entirely on game, for certainly rainfall could
not have supplied them with sufficient water, nor these mountains with
enough game. It is my guess that far back in the past ages a great river
flowed at the bottom of these cliffs, that rainfall was plenty, that the
inhabitants were farmers, and that what appears to be a fort or reservoir
on top of the cliffs was a storehouse for the community’s grain.
In the ruins of southern Colorado I am told a great calamity befell the
people and that the skeletons lie unburied, and the general confusion
denoted a sudden end, but on the Puye ruins, there is absolutely no
indication of where these thousands of people went, or how or why
they went.
PERSONNEL SET UP MUSEUM OF INDIAN
ARTIFACTS FOUND ON ISLAND OF POINT
MUGU
PRESS COURIER, JANUARY 18, 1963
Oxnard, California: Sailors and scientists at San Nicolas Island have
dedicated their spare time to digging up samples of civilizations long
past to break the monotony of the space age. Now on display at the
Point Mugu administration building is a collection of primitive artifacts
used by Indians who inhabited this land some 4,000 years ago.
The collection is a gift to Capt. J. G. Smith, commanding officer of
the Naval Air Station at Point Mugu, donated by two archeology-
minded sailors who recently were transferred from the island. Captain
Smith, also an amateur archeologist, is credited with the discovery of
an Indian fresh water system on the island last April.
San Nicolas Island has long been known as one of the prime
archeological sites of the eight Channel Islands that skirt the California
coasts. Since first excavations and studies were began in 1875, San
Nicolas has yielded hundreds of artifacts from ancient Indian burial
sites.
110
These discoveries have helped give archeologists a new insight into
the ancient history of California. Most extensive studies of the island
have been carried on during the past ten years by members of UCLA’s
Department of Anthropology and Sociology and by other Southern
California institutions. Last year, however, sailors who live and work at
this small space-age island facility started a new excavation for artifacts
during off hours from their regular duty watches in support of satellite
and missile firings from nearby Point Mugu, Vandenberg Air Force
Base and the Naval Missile Facility, Point Arguello.
Early in 1962, two navy men were assigned to a group of
archeologists from UCLA to assist in excavations on the island. James
O. Casper, aviation boatswain 3rd class, and Kenneth H. Brittonn,
commissary man 2nd class, soon found themselves not only assisting,
but genuinely interested in digging for artifacts.
San Nicolas Island is a windswept, almost barren plateau measuring
nine miles in length and averaging three miles in width. It is the most
remote of the Channel Islands and is located 78 miles west of Los
Angeles and 55 miles southwest of the Point Mugu Naval Air Station.
Navy and civilian personnel stationed on San Nicolas are virtually
isolated from the mainland. Spare-time drags unless used to the best
possible advantage.
Consequently, the two sailors found themselves grubbing through
sites even after the archeologists had gone. In time, Casper and Brittonn
gathered an impressive collection of artifacts from prehistoric burial
fields on the island’s sandy and dune-covered southern tip. Their
collection included a small whistle made of black stone, shell heads,
fish hooks fashioned from abalone shell, primitive knives and drills,
arrowheads chipped from stone, and a length of rope woven from
seaweed. All the artifacts were formed by hand from the only materials
the Indians had—those which nature had provided. Radiation dating
analysis on similar items indicated that the artifacts range in age from
2,000 to 4,000 years.
Ill
4
COPPER-CROWNED KINGS AND PEARL-
BEDECKED QUEENS
It is natural for human beings to link size and power with elevated
status. In the legends of giants that have arisen in various parts of the
world, giants are often depicted as gods and kings. So it is not
surprising that the remains of giants found in America are accompanied
by signs of royalty such as copper crowns and other regalia like pearl
robes and mica ornaments, as well as being found in ritualistic burial
patterns and settings. The kings are also often found buried standing up,
surrounded by four megalithic slabs of stone. Sometimes kings and
queens are buried in stone sarcophagi, and mummification dating to
8000 BCE has also been scientifically confirmed.
THE SMITHSONIAN LEADS GEORGIA GIANT SEARCH
The Smithsonian is front and center in this account from 1884 of the
discovery of a royal burial.
GIANT CROWNED ROYALTY IS FOUND
_ ATHENS, GEORGIA, BANNER, MAY 6, 1884 _
Athens, Georgia: Mr. J. B. Toomer yesterday received a letter from Mr.
Hazelton, who is on a visit to Cartersville. The letter contained several
beads made of stone, and gave an interesting account of the opening of
a large Indian mound near that town by a committee of scientists sent
out from the Smithsonian Institution. After removing the dirt for some
distance, a layer of large flag stones was found, which had evidently
been dressed by hand, and showed that the men who quarried this rock
understood their business.
The stones were removed, when in a kind of vault beneath them, the
skeleton of a giant, who measured seven feet two inches, was found.
His hair was coarse and jet black and hung to his waist, the brow
112
being ornamented with a copper crown. The skeleton was remarkably
well-preserved and taken from the vault intact. Near this skeleton were
found the bodies of several small children of various sizes. The remains
of the latter were covered with beads, made of bone of some kind.
Upon removing these, the bodies were found to be encased in a
network made of straw or reed, and beneath this was the covering of an
animal of some kind.
In fact, the bodies had been prepared somewhat after the manner of
mummies, and will doubtless throw new light on the history of the
people who raised the mounds.
Upon the stones that covered the vault were carved inscriptions,
which, if deciphered, will probably lift the veil that has enshrouded the
history of the race of giants that undoubtedly at one time inhabited the
continent.
ALL THE RELICS WERE SHIPPED TO THE
SMITHSONIAN
All the relics were carefully packed and sent to the Smithsonian
Institution, and are said to be the most interesting collection ever found
in America.
The explorers are now at work on a mound in Barlow County, and
before their return home will visit various sections of Georgia where
antiquities are found. On the Oconee River, in Greene County, just
above Powell’s Mills, are several mounds, one of them very tall and
precipitous.
THE INCREDIBLE PEARLS OF OHIO’S ROYAL GIANTS
Ohio mound builder grave sites are notable for fabulous caches of
freshwater pearls found in the burials.
ROYAL MOUND FOUND
OAKLAND TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 10, 1925
Surrounded by bushels of pearls, some of them as large as hickory nuts,
skeletons, believed to be from a royal family of the prehistoric mound
builders, have been dug out of the largest of the Great Seip group of
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mounds not far from Chillicothe, Ohio. That ancient mound is 680 feet
long, 160 feet wide, and 28 feet high.
Archaeologists have undertaken the task of exploring it by
excavation. It is estimated that the skeletons may be anywhere from
1,000 to 2,000 years old. Two of them wore copper helmets, and one of
the skulls was provided with a copper nose.
In what is now Ohio, long before Columbus discovered America,
pearl fishing was an important industry. The streams of that region
were full of pearl bearing mussels, and aboriginal chieftains of the
Miami and Scioto Valleys possessed collections of pearls which might
well have been envied by European princes and potentates.
MILLIONS OF PEARLS RECOVERED
In one Ohio mound a few years ago were found enough pearls to fill a
gallon measure, in size from a millet seed to two-thirds of an inch in
diameter. There have been many such finds, one mound yielding two
bushels of pearls. From another, 500,000 were obtained. Unfortunately
these pearls have no present value. They were buried with the
chieftains who owned them, or thrown into altar fires, so that they are
either decayed or burned. In some instances they have been found
cemented together in masses by water percolating through the soil. An
occasional specimen of large size has been salvaged by peeling off the
outer coats, a pearl being formed in layers like an onion. Evidence of
the great antiquity of the Ohio mounds is afforded by the fact that they
contain no buffalo bones. This seems to prove that at the time of their
construction the buffalo had not yet extended its range as far east as
Ohio.
GIANT KING’S MOUTH STUFFED WITH IMMENSE PEARLS
At another Ohio site immense pearls were stuffed in the skeleton’s
mouth and a bear’s tooth necklace was also adorned with pearls, both
indications of royalty. As he was buried together with a woman, she is
seen as his queen.
WORLD’S FAIR DIG LEADS TO GIANT
MONARCH
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GIGANTIC SKELETON, EVIDENTLY OF A
PREHISTORIC MONARCH, EXHUMED IN OHIO
CENTRALIA OHIO ENTERPRISE, NOVEMBER 21, 1891
Chillicothe, Ohio: Warren K. Morehead and Dr. Cresson, who have
been prosecuting excavations here for the past two months in the
interest of the World’s Fair, have just made one of the richest finds of
the century in the way of prehistoric remains.
Those gentlemen have confined their excavation to the Hopewell
Farm, seven miles from here, upon which are located some twenty-odd
Indian mounds. On Saturday, they were at work on a mound 500 feet
long, 200 feet wide and 28 feet high.
At the depth of 14 feet, near the center of the mound, they exhumed
the massive skeleton of a man encased in copper armor. The head was
covered in an oval-shaped copper cap, the jaws had copper mouldings,
the arms were dressed in copper, while copper plates covered the chest
and stomach and on each side of the head, on protruding sticks were
wooden antlers ornamented with copper.
The mouth was stuffed with genuine pearls of immense size, but
much decayed. Around the neck was a necklace of bear’s teeth set with
pearls.
At the side of the male skeleton was also found a female skeleton,
the two being supposed to be man and wife. Mr. Morehead and Mr.
Cresson believe they have at last found the “King of the Mound
Builders.”
BODIES WRAPPED IN PRECIOUS GEMS
_ OAKLAND TRIBUNE, JANUARY 3, 1926 _
In the United States perhaps the greatest interest was aroused by the
discovery near Bainbridge, Ohio, of the remains of four bodies of the
ancient mound builders, a race believed by some scientists to have
preceded the Indians. ... In the graves were found fresh-water pearls in
such numbers as to convince state archaeologists directing the
excavations that the bodies had been wrapped in a covering of precious
gems.
115
When the skeletons were lifted it was found that they had been
resting on pearls. Fragments of tortoise shells etched with figures of
birds and necklaces made of grizzly-bear claws were found.
INDIANS HAVE NO ORAL TRADITIONS
REGARDING THE MOUNDS
Mounds such as the ones uncovered in Ohio are not rarities to the
scientist. They were known to the earliest settlers, but no Indian
tradition has ever accounted for them.
Fig. 4.1. This couple was buried holding hands, one of the common positions
found in American mound burials. Others include man on top and woman on the
bottom, as well as woman on top and man on the bottom. This particular image is
of skeletons found in central-northern Italy, and the couple was buried holding
116
hands some 1,500 years ago (Soprintendenza per I Beni Archeologici dell’Emilia-
Romagna, Discovery News).
Dr. William C. Mills, director of the Ohio State Archaeological and
Historical Society, believes that the mound builders once had extensive
communities throughout the central portion of North America.
“There is little evidence they were a war-like people. On the
contrary, they were a settled, agricultural, hunting and fishing race,
given to intensive culture within the limits of their knowledge. They
had more than a rudimentary knowledge of mathematics.
“The square, the circle, the octagon, regular polygons, ellipses,
exactly measured parallelograms and parallel lines laid out in a large
scale were in common use. The bones excavated show that they were a
capable people physically. They were fairly broad shouldered and their
average height was slightly under six feet.”
In 1926, more finds were discovered in Ohio. This time it was toys
found with the skeleton of a boy about twelve years old. The discovery
of children’s toys in the burial mounds is not at all unusual. At other
sites small playhouses, toy animals, and game sets have been found.
Another recurring theme in the burial mounds is the discovery of
houses, temples, vaults, and other structures built inside the mounds. In
this instance, the boy had his own cabin, but inside were a number of
personal items, including marbles engraved with beautiful designs.
PREHISTORIC ENGRAVED MARBLES
_ ASSOCIATED PRESS, SEPTEMBER 17, 1926 _
Chillicothe, Ohio: The skeleton of a twelve-year-old boy, with a
number of marbles, prized relics of childhood, was removed from the
Bricer Mound of the Seip group, near Bainbridge, eighteen miles west
of here, the other day.
This is the second of a group of burials found near the rear of the
mound, where last year “the great pearl burial” was unearthed and
where this summer five cremated burials, with the usual finds of black,
tan, and white wildcat jaws and marine tortoise shell combs were
disclosed.
The boy’s body had been interred in a cabin-like structure and was
117
covered by a canopy, the mold of which was found. The body had been
clothed in a garment of woven fabric. The grave contained many
unusual specimens, H. S. Shetrone, curator of the Ohio Museum, said.
“We found a number of marbles made from chlorite, a fine, close-
grained stone, which takes a very high polish, engraved in beautiful
designs. They had been placed there reverently by loving hands.
“We believe playing marbles was an honorable past-time even in the
time of the mound builders,” Shetrone said.
STONE AND MICA ANIMALS GALORE
Besides the marbles there was found a stone carved in the shape of a
turkey vulture; carefully cut down to the feather markings. Another
stone was carved like a lizard, with a tail resembling the rattles of a
rattlesnake; beads, green chlorite resembling turquoise; many well-cut
mica designs, teeth of raccoon, fox, wolf, mountain lion, bear, and
other wild animals, which roamed the forest, pierced so that they could
be worn as ornaments; woven fabric, obsidian spear points, and a few
bits of copper.
Fig. 4.2. Lamantin or sea-cow, illustration from Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis
CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA—HOME TO GIANTS,
ANCIENT KINGS, AND HIGH PRIESTS
In many respects the West Virginia mounds are key to understanding
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the giants who once ruled America. Not only are the West Virginia
mound sites in Charleston, Wheeling, and Moundsville some of the
most significant in size and number in the United States, but in 1883,
the Smithsonian dispatched a team of archaeologists to conduct an
extensive dig of the fifty mounds they found there and issue a detailed
report.
The team, led by Col. P. W. Norris and Professor Cyrus Thomas,
prepared the detailed report of the work (Smithsonian Field Report
1883), which shows quite clearly that they uncovered numerous giants,
one of which was decorated with heavy copper bracelets.
As we catalogue the unusual burial practices associated with the
mound builders, the sun circle burial arrangement is one of the
most dramatic. In this case ten skeletons were found all buried with
their feet facing inwards surrounding a central skeleton,
presumably that of a King or a high-ranking spiritual or military
leader.
In burial mound number 7, a giant seven feet tall was found with
his head pointing west. Lying in a circle just above the hips were
sixty circular pieces of white perforated shell, each about one inch
in diameter and about an eighth of an inch thick. His arm was
found to be reaching out towards an oven-shaped vault containing
two bushels of corn.
In this burial a covering of flat stones with cup-shaped markings
covered the upper layer of the burial. Cup-shaped markings on
stones have been found in Europe as well as South America. In this
case, further digging revealed a stone slab coffin with a skeleton
laid out facing to the east.
Mound 23 was found to be of a hardened pyramidal shape.
Digging was difficult, as the mound seemed to be reinforced with a
hard cement-like substance. Digs at other mounds across the U.S.
have also uncovered similar cement substances, which researchers
have likened to a type of Portland cement.
In many of the more elaborate mound burials, actual huts, houses
and temples have been uncovered under the mounds. In this case,
what had once been a circular or polygonal timbered and conical-
roofed vault was found with a number of burials contained inside.
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One of the most iconic and unusual of the mound builder burial
practices involved the burial of adult couples in romantic embrace,
sometimes even kissing. Similar burials have been found recently
in Europe [see Fig. 4.5. 1. Further down in this burial mound,
another couple was found in a sitting posture with their legs
interlocked to the knees.
Fig. 4.3. Grave Creek Mound (courtesy of Tim Kiser)
FIFTY MAJOR MOUNDS IN THE
CHARLESTON AREA
CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL, SEPTEMBER 23, 1923
Extending along the terrace about five miles over-looking the Kanawha
River west of Charleston, above flood level were found about 50
mounds. They range in height from 5 to 35 feet. The principal one is
known as the South Charleston Mound, which is 175 feet in diameter at
the base and 35 feet high.
In all it is estimated that there are at least 100,000 mounds in the
Eastern portion of the United States. These represent the work of
millions of people, many nations and tribes, and they were constructed
over a long period of time.
120
FLINT, THE MAJOR INDUSTRY
The leading industry was the quarrying of flint and the manufacture of
instruments from this hard quartz-like substance. Many quarries have
been discovered where large piles of chipped flint are found. Some
copper tools have been found but they are rare. They seem to have been
hammered out of bits of the metal that were found in the crevices of the
rock. . . . Beads in great number have been found. They consisted of
pearls, shells, copper, bones, and mica. Copper finger rings and
bracelets have been unearthed in great numbers.
Many skeletons have been found with their arms covered in
bracelets.
ON THE SMITHSONIAN’S DISCOVERY OF
THE SEVEN-FOOT, SIX-INCHES-TALL GIANT
The excavation of this mound was made by sinking a shaft from the
top, reports the Smithsonian in their 1883 field report. After removing
some large stones, a vault was found in which was a decayed skeleton,
minus a head. At a depth of six feet another skeleton was found, and
three feet deeper, a third one was discovered. The real find was 19 feet
from the top. Here a large vault 12 feet square, and 7 or 8 feet high, was
discovered. Upright timbers had been placed around the sides to hold
up the roof, but they had decayed, and dirt and rocks had fallen into the
vault.
121
Fig. 4.4. Carvings of human faces illustration from Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis
In this vault were five skeletons, four of whom had been placed in
each corner in an erect position, and the fifth was lying flat on the floor.
The four seemed to be standing guard over a chief or important person.
This man was a giant, seven feet, six inches tall, and measured nineteen
inches between his shoulder sockets. He had been buried in a bark
coffin, placed on his back with arms at his side and legs together.
There were six heavy bracelets on each wrist and four others under
his head. On the breast was a copper gorget (piece of armor). Three
spear heads were found in each hand and others were scattered about
the floor of the vault. On the shoulder were three large plates of mica
and around the shoulders were many small ornamental shells. While the
dirt was being put back a smoking pipe, which had been carved out of
gray steatite (soapstone), was found. It was highly polished and similar
to others found in mounds in Ohio.
The exploration was made by sinking a shaft 12 feet square at the top
and narrowing gradually to six feet square at the bottom, down through
the center of the structure to the original surface of the ground and a
short distance below it. After removing a slight covering of earth, an
irregular mass of large rough, f lat sandstones, evidently brought from
the bluffs half a mile distant was encountered. Some of these
sandstones were a load for two ordinary men.
122
Other mounds were excavated and records made, writes the
Smithsonian in 1883. In one a large skeleton was found surrounded by
ten other skeletons. An “altar mound” was excavated. In the center of it
were found two skeletons seated, apparently holding, between them and
above their heads, a large stone.
SKELETONS OF GIANT MEN ARE
DISCOVERED
ONE HILL REVEALS A CENTRAL FRAME OF
BONES WITH TEN OTHERS LYING ABOUT IT IN A
CIRCLE, FEET POINTED INWARD
Many of these mounds were, however, opened and investigated some
65 years ago by Professors Thomas and Col. Norris of the Smithsonian
Institution Washington. Their interesting discoveries including
skeletons seven foot six inches tall, underground vaults (ornaments and
religious items), and spear heads are preserved in a report in the
possession of C. E. Krebs, archaeologist, who by the very nature of his
work, is very much interested himself in the mounds of the Kanawha
Valley.
The reporter then goes on to reconstruct the story of the mounds as
was reported in the now impossible-to-find 1883 Smithsonian report
and adds scientific information from the then-recent discoveries made
at the mounds in 1923.
THE FOUR SENTINELS
At this point in his downward progress Col. Norris began to encounter
the remains of what further excavations showed to be a timber vault
about twelve feet square and seven or eight feet high. From the
condition in which the remains of the cover were found, he concluded
that this must have been roof-shaped and, having become decayed, had
been crushed by the weight of the addition made to the mound. Some
of the walnut timbers of this vault were twelve inches in diameter.
In this vault were found five skeletons, one lying prostrate on the
floor at the depth of 19 feet from the top of the mound and four others,
which, from the positions in which they were found were supposed to
be standing in the four corners.
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The first of these was found standing at the depth of 14 feet, amid a
comingled mass of earth and decaying bark and timbers, nearly erect
and leaning against the wall and surrounded by the remains of a bark
coffin. All the bones except those of the left forearm were too far
decayed to be saved; these were preserved by two heavy copper
bracelets, which yet surrounded them.
The skeleton found in the middle of the floor of the vault was of
unusually large size “measuring seven feet six inches in length and
nineteen inches between the shoulder sockets.” It had also been
enclosed in a wrapping or coffin of bark, the remains of which were
still distinctly visible. It lay upon the back, head east, legs together, and
arms at the sides. There were six heavy bracelets on each wrist, four
others were found under the head, which together with a spear point of
black flint, were encased in a mass of mortar-like substance, which
evidently had been wrapped in some textile fabric. On the breast was a
copper gorget.
In each hand were three spear heads of black flint, and others were
about the head, knees, and feet. Near the right hand were hematite celts
(ax heads) and on the shoulder were three large and thick plates. About
the shoulders, waist, and thighs were numerous minute perforated
shells and shell beads.
THE SECOND MOUND IS OPENED
The large mound in South Charleston is conical in form, 173 feet in
diameter, and 33 feet high. It is slightly truncated, the top having been
leveled off some 97 years ago for the purpose of building a judge’s
stand in connection with a race course that was laid out around the
mound.
A shaft twelve feet square at the top and six feet at the bottom was
used to excavate the center shaft in an identical manner to mound one
in the report. At a depth of four feet, in a very hard mix of earth and
ash, were found two much decayed human skeletons both stretched
horizontally on their back, heads south, and near their heads several
stone implements.
At a depth of 31 feet there was a human skeleton lying prostrate,
head north, which had evidently been enclosed in a coffin or wrapping
of elm bark. In contact with the head was a thin sheet of hammered
124
native copper (a crown?).
By enlarging the base of the shaft to sixteen feet it made the
character and content of burial more fully ascertained. This brought to
light the fact that the builders, after having first smoothed, leveled, and
picked the natural surface, carefully spread upon the floor a layer of
bark (chiefly elm), the inner side up, and upon this a layer of fine white
ashes, clear of charcoal, to a depth probably of five or six inches,
though pressed at the time of exploration to little more than one inch.
On this the bodies were properly laid and presumably covered with
bark.
The enlargement of the shaft also brought to view ten other skeletons
all apparently adults, five on one side and five on the other side of the
central skeleton, and like it, extended horizontally, with the feet
pointing towards the central one, though not quite touching it. Like the
first, they all had been buried in bark coffins or wrappings.
Below the center of the No. 7 Charleston mound, sunk into the
original earth, was a vault about eight feet long, three feet wide, and
three feet deep. Lying extended on the back, in the bottom of this, amid
the rotten fragments of a bark coffin, was a decayed human skeleton,
fully seven feet tall, with head west. No evidence of fire was to be seen,
nor were any stone implements discovered, but lying in a circle just
above the hips were sixty circular pieces of white perforated shell, each
about one inch in diameter and about an eighth of an inch thick.
The bones of the left arm lay by the side of the body, but those of the
right arm, as in one of the mounds heretofore mentioned, were
stretched at a right angle to the body, reaching out to a small oven¬
shaped vault, the mortar or cement roof of which was still unbroken.
The capacity of this small circular vault was probably two bushels, and
the peculiar appearance of the dark-colored deposits therein, and other
indications, led to the belief that it had been filled with corn maize, in
the ear.
The absence of weapons would indicate that the individual buried
here was not a warrior, though a person of some importance.
One mound, twenty feet in diameter and seven feet high with a beech
tree 30 inches in diameter growing on it, was opened by running a
trench through it. The material of which it was composed was yellow
125
clay evidently from an extraction in the hillside near it.
Stretched horizontally on the natural surface of the ground, faces up
and heads south, were seven skeletons: six adult and one child, all
charred. They were covered several inches thick with ashes, charcoal,
and firebrands, evidently the remains of a very heavy fire that must
have been smothered before it was fully burned out. Three coarse lance
heads were found among the bones of the adults and around the back of
the child three copper beads, of apparently hammered native copper.
Another mound 50 feet diameter and five feet high, standing guard
as it were, at the entrance of an enclosure, was opened revealing the
following particulars. The top was strewn with fragments of flat rock,
most of which were marked by one or more small, artificial, cup¬
shaped depressions. Below these, to a depth of two or three feet, the
hard yellow clay was mixed throughout with similar stones, charcoal,
ashes, stone chips and fragments of rude pottery.
Near the center and about three feet from the top of the mound were
the decayed remains of a human skeleton, lying on its back in a very
rude stone slab coffin. Beneath were other flat stones, and under them
charcoal, ashes and baked earth, covering the decayed bones of some
three or four skeletons, which lay upon the original surface of the
ground. As far as could be ascertained, the skeletons in the mound lay
with their heads to the east. No relics of any kind worthy of notice were
found with them.
Mound 23 of this group shows some peculiarities worthy of notice. It
is 312 feet in circumference at the base, and 25 feet high, covered with
a second growth of timber. It is unusually sharp and symmetrical. From
the top down the material was found to be a light gray and apparently
mixed earth, so hard as to require the vigorous use of a pick to
penetrate it. At a depth of 15 feet, the explorers began to find the casts
and fragments of poles or round timbers less than a foot in diameter.
These casts and rotten remains of wood and bark increased in
abundance from this point until the original surface of the ground was
reached.
By enlarging the lower end of the shaft to 14 feet in diameter, it was
ascertained that this rotten wood and bark were the remains of what had
once been a circular or polygonal timbered and conical-roofed vault.
Many of the timbers of the sides and roof had been allowed to extend
126
past the points of support, often 8 or 10 feet, those on the sides beyond
the crossing, and thereof the roof downward beyond the wall. On the
floor and amid the remains of the timbers, were numerous human bones
and two human skeletons, the latter though slightly decayed badly
crushed by the weight pressing upon them, but unaccompanied by any
ornament of any kind.
A further excavation of about four feet below the floor, or what was
supposed to be the floor of this vault, and below the original surface of
the ground, brought to light six circular oven-shaped vaults, each about
three feet in diameter and the same in depth.
As these six were placed as to form a semi-circle, it was presumed
that there are many others under that portion of the mound not reached
by the excavation. All were filled with dry, dark dust (presumably
cremated remains), or decayed substances, supposed to be the remains
of Indian corn in the ear as it was similar to that heretofore mentioned.
In the center of the circle indicated by the position of these minor
vaults, and the supposed center of the base of the mound (the shaft not
being exactly central), and about two feet below the floor of the main
vault, and in a fine mortar or cement, were found two cavities
resembling in form the bottom of gourd-shaped vessels so frequently
met with in the mounds of eastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas.
Mound 32 of this group seems to furnish a connecting link between
the West Virginia and Ohio mounds. ... It is sharp in outline and has a
deep slope, and is flattened at the top; it is 315 feet in circumference at
the base and about 25 feet high. It was opened by sinking a shaft 10
feet in diameter from the center of the top of the base. After passing
through the top layer of surface soil, some two feet thick, a layer of
clay and ashes one foot thick was encountered.
Here, near the center of the shaft, skeletons were lying horizontally,
one immediately over the other, the upper or larger one with the face
down and the lower one with face up. There were no indications of fire
about them. Immediately over the heads were one celt (ax head) and
three lance heads. ...
At the depth of thirteen feet and a little north of the center of the
mound, were two very large skeletons in a sitting posture, with their
extended legs interlocked to the knees. Their arms were extended and
127
the hands slightly elevated, as if together holding up a sandstone mortar
which was between their faces.
This stone is somewhat hemispherical, about two feet in diameter
across the top, which is hollowed in the shape of a shallow basin or
mortar. It had been subjected to the act of fire until bright red. The
cavity was filled with white ashes containing small fragments of bone
burned to cinders.
Fig. 4.5. One of the distinguishing characteristics of mound builder burial practices
is the paired burial. The interlocked skeletons described by the Charleston Daily
Mall in 1923 are very similar to these two interlocked Stone Age skeletons—with
their “eternal embrace” intact. Discovered near Verona, Italy, the setting of Romeo
and Juliet, the roughly 5,000-year-old couple has already become an icon of
enduring love to many (photo from the Archaeological Society).
128
Immediately over this, and of a sufficient size to cover it, was a slab
of bluish-gray limestone about three inches thick, which had small cup¬
shaped excavations on the underside. This bore no marks of fire. Near
the hands of the eastern skeleton were a small hematite celt and a lance
head and upon the left wrist of the other two copper bracelets.
At the depths of 25 feet and on the natural surface was found what in
an Ohio Mound would be called an “altar.” This was not thoroughly
traced throughout, but was about twelve feet long and over eight feet
wide.
Fig. 4.6. Toucan illustration from Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley by
Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis
FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNT OF THE 1883
OPENING OF THE SOUTH CHARLESTON
MOUND
BY CHARLES CONNOR
CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL, APRIL 7, 1952
In looking at the history of the South Charleston Mound, it turns out
our best source is A. R. Sines, grandfather of Dr. F. A. Sines,
Charleston dentist. Mr. Sines, who died in 1937, had a written account
of his part in the mound opening published in the 1920s.
No doubt among the thousands of people who daily pass the large
mound at South Charleston, many have often wondered if there is
anyone living who can tell what is lying, or once lay, at the bottom
129
of that pile of earth. I am probably the only man now living who
stood at the bottom of this mound and assisted with a thorough
examination of every foot of its interior from top to bottom in
November of 1883.
EMPLOYED BY THE SMITHSONIAN IN 1883
To help in the excavation by Col. P. W. Norris, an old Indian scout who
was then in the employ of the Smithsonian Institution of Washington.
Colonel Norris, former superintendent of the Yellowstone National
Park, was investigating all mounds of West Virginia, Ohio, and nearby
states at that time.
In opening the mound, the men under Col. Norris’ supervision first
leveled off the top, then dug a round hole ten feet in diameter
downward. As they progressed towards the bottom, they dug out a
series of shelves around the sides to have a place to throw the dirt.
Four feet from the bottom we made our first discovery. We came
upon a large bed of charred wood, something resembling charred
bones, and many small pieces which were more intact resembling
burnt teeth. This had, beyond a doubt, once been a funeral pyre.
The decayed bones belonged to what once had been a most
powerful man. There was but little left, but the distance from the
spot where the heel bone was found to what was left of the skull
was 6 feet 8 3 A inches.
The shoulder bones were considerably broader than those of
men of our present race, although the skull bone was not so large.
The teeth were larger than those we have today. The front part of
the skull was nearly double the thickness of a human skull today.
A COPPER CROWN AND A QUEEN
Sines and Colonel Norris found a copper band around the forehead of
this buried giant, and similar copper bands around the wrists and
ankles. With no copper nearer than Tennessee, they assumed it had
been carried here by these mound builders thousands of years ago.
They also found axe-shaped stones grooved in the middle. Sines
related that this stone was not familiar to this country and so hard that
steel would not make a dent.
130
“Two miles down near where Sunset Memorial Park is today,” Sines
related, “they opened a smaller mound and located the bones of what
appeared to be the remnants of a woman. There were copper bands on
the ankle and wrist bones and larger pieces of copper on each breast.”
Fig. 4.7. A sacramental pipe in the shape of a human, illustration from Ancient
Monuments of the Mississippi Valley by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis
GRAVE CREEK MOUND, WEST VIRGINIA
The best-known mound and the largest in the Ohio Valley region is the
Grave Creek Mound at Moundsville. This mound was purchased by the
state in 1908. Part of the necessary funds was raised by school children.
It is now a public park and is maintained by prisoners of the
penitentiary. It is located directly opposite the walls of the state prison.
It was discovered by Joseph Tomlinson in 1772. Two years prior,
this pioneer had built his cabin near the site of the now-famous burial
ground. Around it he noted a number of smaller mounds. The largest of
the group was sixty-nine feet in height and about nine hundred feet in
circumference at the base. On it were huge oak trees that indicated that
the mound had been built many years before it was discovered by white
men.
THE MOUNDSVILLE GIANTS
BY PATRICIA CANTLEY
RALEIGH REGISTER, JUNE 19, 1963
The largest of the prehistoric remains in this state is the Grave Creek
131
Mound at Moundsville in Marshall County. It looks about 900 feet
around at the base and is 69 feet high. When the mound was opened in
1883 by inexperienced workmen, a burial vault was discovered. It
contained two compartments: one in the center of the mound on a level
with the surrounding land and the other about half way to the top.
In each compartment were found skeletons, two in the lower and one
in the upper. Each skeleton was surrounded by ivory beads and other
ornaments of various kinds. One skeleton was covered by thin pieces of
mica. It was claimed there was also found a stone tablet near the upper
compartment, on which were inscribed characters that resembled
ancient hieroglyphics.
The second largest mound in the state is in the center of South
Charleston. When it was excavated in 1883 by scientists from the
Smithsonian Institution, a giant skeleton, about seven feet tall, was
found in what appeared to be a vault in the center of the mound.
Around this skeleton were numerous ornaments. Pieces of mica on
the shoulders appeared to be epaulets, and a large piece of copper on
the chest seemed to be a shield. At each of the four corners of this vault
were skeletons.
SALEM PROFESSOR DISCOVERS HUGE
SKELETONS IN MOUNDS
DR. SUTTON BELIEVES TRIBE OF GIANTS ONCE INHABITED
_ CHARLESTON GAZETTE, JUNE 15, 1930 _
June 14: Excavation of two mounds near Morganville, in Doddridge
County, about 11 miles west of here revealed what Prof. Ernest Sutton,
head of the history department of Salem College, believes is valuable
evidence of a race of giants who inhabited this section of West Virginia
more than 1,000 years ago.
Prof. Sutton revealed tonight that he had been excavating the two
mounds for the past several months. Skeletons of four mound builders
indicating they were from seven to nine feet tall have been uncovered.
Professor Sutton believes they were members of a race known in
anthropology as Siouan Indians.
The best preserved skeleton was found enclosed in a casting of clay.
132
All the vertebrae and other bones excepting the skull were intact.
Careful measurement of this specimen indicated it was a man seven and
a half feet tall.
LARGEST MOUND OPENED
The largest mound was excavated in 1883 by A. B. Tomlinson. A
tunnel ten feet high and seven feet wide, was driven on the level of the
ground toward the center. At a distance of 111 feet, the work men
discovered a vault 12 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 7 feet deep. It had
been sunk in the earth before the mound was erected. The vault had
been erected by placing upright timbers along each side, and along the
ends which supported timbers that formed the ceiling. The top of the
vault was then covered with rough stones. With the decay of the
timbers, the stones and dirt had fallen into the vault.
Fig. 4.8. This find of a nine-foot skeleton in Indianna was shipped to the
Smithsonian, where it immediately went into the “memory hole.”
When the stones were removed, two skeletons were found.
Surrounding one of them were 656 ivory beads and nearby was an
ivory ornament about six inches long. There were no ornaments on the
other skeleton.
SEVENTEEN HUNDRED IVORY BEADS AND
133
FIVE COPPER BRACELETS MADE FOR A
KING
Then an excavation was done from the top of the mound to connect
with the tunnel. About the center of the shaft another vault was
discovered that contained a single skeleton. This person must have been
one of great importance because he was surrounded by many
ornaments: 1,700 ivory beads, 500 sea shells, about 150 pieces of
obsidian glass and 5 copper bracelets on the wrists.
MORE HEAVILY DEBATED HIEROGLYPHS
In the second vault, about two feet from the skeleton, was found the
famous stone that has been the subject of controversy on the part of
many antiquarians. Some claim it was a hoax.
On it were certain characters, sort of hieroglyphs, and it was hoped by
some that it would prove to be a sort of Rosetta Stone with a message
from an ancient race.
134
Fig. 4.9. The beautiful eight-foot queen in all her glory
ORIGINALLY DUG IN 1838
CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL, 1938
The mound was excavated exactly 100 years ago, the work having been
begun on March 19, 1838. The owner and interested neighbor, none of
whom were trained antiquarians, did the work. It is possible they over
looked many things, that would have thrown light on the life and habits
of the mound builders.
THE ANCIENT GIANTS BUILT A STONE
135
WALL EIGHT MILES LONG
Another prehistoric ruin that has been attributed to the mound builders
is a stone wall on the hill top above Mount Carbon, about four miles
east of Montgomery, overlooking the Kanawha River. It was
constructed around the brow of the mountain about three hundred feet
from the summit. It is broken in places, but it is at least eight miles
long. At intervals there are large piles of stones that indicate that towers
or gates were constructed at these points.
ANCIENT HILLTOP TEMPLE
The stones, which were loosely placed together without mortar or
cement, are similar to those found at the bottom of the mountain. It was
evidently a great task to carry them up the steep hillside. One naturally
asks why these walls were constructed: hardly for defense, because
there is no evidence of a habitation. No water is to be found on the
mountain top. The walls are built on the highest mountain in the
vicinity and they have been for temples of worship.
THE OHIO CONNECTION
The most important and the most interesting group of mounds erected
in West Virginia is found in the vicinity of Charleston. They are
distinctive, although they have characteristics similar to the mounds
found in Ohio and have been classified with the latter. The ancient
people who lived near Charleston were undoubtedly related to those
who lived in Ohio.
ANCIENT KING FOUR THOUSAND YEARS
OLD FOUND
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS, NOVEMBER 1, 1936
This summer witnessed the unearthing of a skeleton of a prehistoric
Texas man, which has been identified as being from the period of the
mound builders. The remains found are estimated to be about 4,000
years old and were located by an expedition from the Department of
Anthropology of the University of Texas. The skeleton was found on
the Old Blanco Road, at a point near Klappenbach Hill, just south of
136
New Braunfels.
The burial is evidently that of a chieftain or minor king of the
moundbuilder race. Regal artifacts were found near the skeleton to
substantiate the theory that this person was of royal birth.
KING CONEHEAD IS DISCOVERED
Throughout my research I ran into reports describing skeletons with
“deformed,” “elongated,” or “flattened” skulls. In almost all the cases
where there was more than a cursory description, it turns out that what
is being described are what have recently been called “coneheads” (in a
humorous reference to a famous Saturday Night Live sketch and
movie), a condition most clearly seen in the famous statue of Queen
Nefertiti.
Traditionally this has been attributed to hydrocephalic deformation
or artificial skull-boarding techniques, but as the number of these skulls
that have been found and studied increases, it is obvious to researchers
that certain skulls are naturally oversized and have increased cranial
capacities that are not the result of disease or artificial manipulation.
Fig. 4.10. Egyptian princess Meritaten (daughter of Nefertiti and Akhenaten) with
typical elongated skull
EVIDENCE OF CONEHEAD BURIAL
137
CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL, SEPTEMBER 23, 1923
The removal of a wagonload or so of these stones brought to light a
stone vault seven feet long and four feet deep in the bottom of which
was found a large and much-decayed human skeleton but wanting the
head, which the most careful investigation failed to discover. A single
rough spearhead was the only accompanying object found in this vault.
At the depth of six feet, in earth similar to that around the base of the
mound, was found a second skeleton also much decayed of an adult of
normal size. At nine feet a third skeleton was discovered, in a mass of
loose dry earth, surrounded by the remains of a bark coffin. This was in
a much better state of preservation than the other two. The skull, which
was preserved, was of the compressed or “flat head” type.
In other words, this skeleton exhibited head characteristics similar to
those found in South America and Egypt. As digs progressed in other
parts of the state, archaeologists in Wheeling, WV found another
grouping of giants ranging in height from 67" to 7'6" and also
displaying unusual skull formations with low foreheads that sloped
back gradually.
MOUND BUILDERS HAD PECULIAR HEADS
Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley
Prof. E. L. Lively and J. L. Williamson of Friendly have made an
examination of the giant skeletons found by children playing near
the town. The femurs and vertebrae were found to be in a
remarkable state of preservation and showed the persons to be of
enormous stature. The skeletons ranged in height from 7'6" down
to 67" inches. The skulls found are of peculiar formation. The
forehead is low and slopes back gradually, while the back part of
the head is very prominent, much more so than the skulls of people
living today. The legs are exceedingly long and the bones
unusually large. The finding of the skeletons has created a great
deal of interest and the general impression is that the bones are the
remains of the people who built the mounds, the largest in the
country being located at Moundsville in Marshall County.
138
History of Indiana County, 1880
One child of five or six years had been buried in a stone-lined
grave along with two infants. They had possibly been victims of an
epidemic. All adults were of medium stature. All but one had head
deformities of a lesser or greater degree. The most interesting
burials were of a woman under thirty, and a child of eight, to ten
years, in the same grave. Around the neck of the woman were
several tiny drilled Gulf of Mexico shells, once part of a necklace.
The shells are an indication of contact with distant tribes. At the
center of her back was found a highly-polished bone tube having
worn areas near each end where strings or thongs had probably
been placed. This bone, possibly from a swan, could have been a
hair ornament.
Around the woman’s leg bones were found 1,458 tubular beads
cut from birds’ long bones. It is surmised that these were fastened
to the hem of her skirt. At the foot of the grave was an unusual
compound pottery vessel in such good condition that it was easily
repaired. It was also found that an intense fire, perhaps of religious
significance, had been built directly over the grave.
THE HORNED SKULL OF SAYRE,
PENNSYLVANIA
CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL, SEPTEMBER. 20, 1916
Sayre is a borough in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, fifty-nine miles
northwest of Scranton. The exact year is not clear, but during the 1880s
a large burial mound was discovered in Sayre. It was reported that a
group of Americans uncovered several strange human skulls and bones.
The skeletons belonged to anatomically normal men with the exception
of bony projections located about two inches above the eyebrows. It
appeared that the skulls had horns. The bones were characterized as
giant, as they were representative of people over seven feet tall.
Scientists estimated that the bodies had been buried around 1200 CE.
The archeological discovery was made by a reputable group of
antiquarians, including Dr. G. P. Donehoo, the Pennsylvania state
dignitary of the Presbyterian Church; A. B. Skinner, of the American
Investigating Museum; and W. K. Morehead, of Phillips Academy,
Andover, Massachusetts.
139
Fig. 4.11. According to historical accounts, the Sayre “Horned Giant” bones were
sent to the American Investigating Museum in Philadelphia. The artifacts were
later reported missing.
This was not the first time that gigantic horned skulls were unearthed
in North America. During the nineteenth century, similar skulls were
discovered near Wellsville, New York, and in a mining village close to
El Paso, Texas. At one time in history, human horns were used as signs
of kingship. Alexander the Great was depicted with horns on some of
his coins. In Moses’s time, horns were a symbol of authority and
power. Apparent pictures of the skulls do exist, but many people claim
the discovery to be a hoax. Conversely, many websites suggest that the
objects are of extraterrestrial origin.
140
Fig. 4.12. Evidence of horns. The Vatican Museum possesses Michelangelo’s
famous statue of Moses.
141
TWO
Sophisticated Cultures of the Ancient
Giants
142
5
PYRAMIDS AND PICTORIAL MOUNDS
At the turn of the twentieth century there was a national awareness of
the mound builders and their extensive earthworks that far exceeded
contemporary consciousness on the subject. Since the majority of the
country still lived an agrarian lifestyle, awareness of the mounds was
reinforced by daily contact with the actual sites themselves. Current
estimates put the number of known American mounds at well over one
hundred thousand. They ranged in shape from the great pyramids of
Illinois to the fantastic pictorial mounds of Wisconsin. It seemed to be
common knowledge that giants were found buried in many of these
mounds and that these giants were not related to the present-day
American Indians living in the region.
THE GREAT PYRAMID MOUNDS OF ILLINOIS
One of the largest of the mound builder sites in North America is
located in southwestern Illinois, near Collinsville. It is commonly
called the Cahokia site. The Cahokia mound complex has been
compared in scope and grandeur to the Great Pyramid. The site is
located at the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois
Rivers, directly across the Mississippi River from present-day St.
Louis. During the Middle Ages, Cahokia was a larger city than London,
with an estimated population of forty to fifty thousand, yet today it is
an abandoned place about which we know almost nothing. Centuries
ago, there were more than 120 mounds at the Cahokia site, though the
locations of only 106 have been recorded. Many of them have been
destroyed or altered because of modern farming and construction,
although sixty-eight have been preserved inside of the boundaries of
the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.
Lawyer and writer H. M. Brackenridge captured the awe of seeing
the Cahokia complex in 1811. He crossed the Mississippi at St. Louis
and after making his way through the woods along the Cahokia Creek,
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passed over the plain to the mounds. He referred to them as
“resembling enormous haystacks scattered through a meadow.”
Journal of a Voyage up the Mississippi River in 1811
By Henri Marie Brackenridge
When I reached the foot of the principle mound, I was struck with
a degree of astonishment not unlike that which is experienced in
contemplating the Egyptian Pyramids. What a stupendous pile of
earth! To heap up such a mass must have required years, and
labors of thousands.
Pursuing my walk along the bank of the Cahokia, I passed eight
other mounds, in the distance of three miles, before I arrived at the
largest assemblage. When I reached the foot of the principle
mound, I was struck with a degree of astonishment not unlike that
which is experienced in contemplating the Egyptian Pyramids.
What a stupendous pile of earth! To heap up such a mass must
have required years, and labors of thousands. It stands immediately
on the banks of the Cahokia, and on the side next to it is covered
with lofty trees. Were it not for the regularity and design it
manifests, the circumstances of it being on alluvial ground, and the
other mounds scattered around it, we would scarcely believe it be
the work of human hands.
The site is named after a tribe of Illiniwek Indians, the Cahokia, who
lived in the area when the French arrived in the late 1600s. What the
actual name of the city may have been in ancient times is unknown.
The modern archaeological site is believed to have existed from AD
700 until its decline in 1300. By 1500, it is thought to have been
completely abandoned.
As is the case with many of the ancient mound builder sites, a true
accounting of the ancient history of the mounds is almost impossible
due to the destruction of over half the mounds at the site, coupled with
the lack of any modern excavation work that could dig down to the
earlier construction at Cahokia, which may be thousands of years
earlier than the dates currently assigned by conventional archaeology.
MONKS MOUND
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The largest earthwork in the Cahokia complex is a stepped pyramid,
which covers about 16 acres. It is often called Monks Mound after
Trappist monks who farmed the terraces in the early 1800s. It was
apparently rebuilt several times in the distant past. At the summit of the
mound are the buried remains of some sort of temple, further adding to
the mystery of the site. Monks Mound measures 100 feet tall, with an
original base of 1,000 feet. These even measurements in feet have
raised the interest of alternative historians, as well as its numerous
astronomical alignments that show great similarities to alignments at
Stonehenge and Teotihuacan, among numerous significant ancient
sites.
Fig. 5.1. Monks Mound, built circa 950-1100 CE and located at the Cahokia
Mounds State Historic Site, near Collinsville, Illinois. Image courtesy of
Skubasteve834.
MYSTERIOUS MOUND 72
In addition, during the excavation of Mound 72, a ridge-top burial
mound south of Monks Mound, archaeologists found the remains of a
man in his forties buried on a bed of more than twenty thousand
marine-shell disc beads arranged in the shape of a falcon, with the
bird’s head appearing beneath and beside the man’s head, and its wings
and tail beneath his arms and legs. Archaeologists also recovered more
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than 250 other skeletons from Mound 72. Scholars believe almost 62
percent of these were sacrificial victims, based on signs of ritual
execution and method of burial.
CIRCULAR WOODEN SUN CALENDARS CALLED
“WOODHENGE”
Some archaeologists believe the last survivors of the mound builders
were the Natchez Indians of the Lower Mississippi Valley. These
Indians were known for being devout worshippers of the sun, which
may explain the uses of the mounds at Cahokia and the so-called
“Woodhenge” at the site. These forty-eight wooden posts make up a
410-foot-diameter circle, and by lining up the central observation posts
with specific perimeter posts at sunrise, the exact date of all four
equinoxes can be determined. Entire books have been written about the
many geological and astral alignments associated with the Cahokia
complex. Although these studies are dismissed by conventional
archaeologists as the wishful thinking of wild-eyed amateurs, what
cannot be denied is the amazing similarity between the Woodhenge
construction found at Cahokia and the similarly constructed
Woodhenge found next to Stonehenge in England.
Although these were the finds revealed to the public after the official
1922 excavation, a previous, unofficial dig at the site uncovered
hundreds more skeletons, some giant in nature, which have all
disappeared from the historical record.
ONLY FORTY OUT OF 120 MOUNDS SURVIVE AT CAHOKIA
The wholesale destruction of the Cahokia complex is one of the
greatest tragedies in the history of modern archaeology in the United
States. Although the site was recognized as highly important as early as
the seventeenth century, no official efforts were made to preserve and
study the site. As a result, well over half the site was destroyed by
farmers and city planners from St. Louis. Despite national efforts to
preserve the site at the turn of the century, Cahokia was not given
National Historic Landmark status until the 1960s.
EXPERTS SHOW RACISM BY DISMISSING
THE MOUNDS
146
CHICAGO TRIBUNE, AUGUST 10, 1892
“Racism and prejudice said The lazy Indian’ couldn’t have made the
mounds,” says archaeologist James Anderson. “That meant excavation
of the site—about ten miles east of St. Louis and named Cahokia after a
group of Indians that lived in the area in the seventeenth century—was
slow in starting, in part, because early ‘experts’ refused to believe that
Indians had built the majestic earthen pyramids that still stand today.”
CAHOKIA WAS 6.5 SQUARE MILES IN AREA
Covering some 6.5 square miles, Cahokia boasted streets, warehouses,
man-made lakes, docks, crude but workable astronomical
observatories, walled fortifications, and scores of earthen mounds as
tall as 10 stories. Flourishing between 900 and 1300 CE, the city
dominated the American Bottoms, a fertile 175-square-mile valley near
the confluences of the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri rivers.
“We know it was a great city,” said Anderson, director of the
Cahokia Mounds Museum. “But we may be short-changing it. It may
have been an empire.”
Excavations have revealed that Cahokian commerce reached from
the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast and from the Western plains to the
Appalachian Mountains, and controlled such raw materials as copper,
mica, sea shells, and flint.
MONKS MOUND TEMPLE
Monks Mound, a flat-topped pyramid named for Trappist monks who
lived nearby in the nineteenth century, has a base covering some
fourteen acres, rises in four terraces to a height of a hundred feet and is
estimated to contain some 22 million cubic feet of earth.
It is thought to have supported a building at least fifty feet high that
was the residence of a leader who held both political and religious
power in Cahokia.
THREE-MILE-LONG STOCKADE
While Monks Mound dominated the city center, which was enclosed by
a 15-foot-high wooden stockade almost three miles long, other mounds
—conical, ridge- and flat-topped—dotted the countryside. The
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functions of the mounds are not known but there is evidence they were
used for burials and as boundary markers.
THREE HUNDRED BURIAL SACRIFICES,
TWENTY THOUSAND BEADS
“The excavation of one ridge-topped mound revealed some three
hundred ceremonial and sacrificial burials, mostly young women in
mass graves, and the body of what appears to be a male ruler, about
forty-five years old on a blanket of more than twenty thousand seashell
beads, and surrounded by the bodies of attendants. The extensive public
works and human sacrifices are evidence of a class society in which
rulers held sway over life and death and labor,” explained Anderson.
Outside the city center were four circular sun calendars of large,
evenly-spaced log posts, called “Woodhenges” because of their
similarity to Stonehenge in Britain. Probably used to predict the
changing of the seasons, they are the most advanced scientific
achievement found at Cahokia.
“Of some 120 mounds built at Cahokia—the Indians carried earth in
60-pound basket loads from pits as far as a mile away—only 40 are
preserved within a 750-acre state park. The rest are on private lands and
have been mostly plowed over by farmers or covered with asphalt in
the name of progress,” said Anderson, bitterly observing a growing
urban sprawl at the foot of the most spectacular of the earthen
pyramids. Monks Mound.
ATTEMPTS TO SAVE THE MOUNDS
In 1905, Congress was petitioned to save the mound builder sites from
destruction. Although Congress made noises about saving these mound
sites from further destruction, funds were not forthcoming. In the case
of Cahokia, it took until 1964 for that complex to receive official
protection as a National Historic Landmark. Similar tales were told
across the nation, since the majority of these sites were on private lands
and the government offered no compensation for preservation of the
mounds. To compound matters, the mound builders still have no
official standing as an indigenous Native American people, as no
official descendants of the mound builders have ever been recognized
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by the courts of the United States.
EARLY BILL CALLS LOR MOUNDS
PRESERVATION
GALVESTON DAILY NEWS, AUGUST 20, 1905
A bill now before Congress, having for its objective the preserving and
protecting from despoliation, the historic and prehistoric ruins or
monuments on the public lands of the United States, especially
Colorado and Utah, where the cliff-dweller once dwelt and placing
them under the care and custody of the Secretary of the Interior, has
served somewhat to revive popular interest in a subject that has been,
heretofore, largely dormant except among scientists. While the bill in
question applies only to the preservation of monuments on Public Land
and particularly to the ruins scattered over the semi-arid regions of
Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado that have left many
evidences of their occupancy of the so-called Pueblo region, it is
conceivable that the movement may soon extend and take the form of
legislative action looking to similar enclosures with reference to the
numerous prehistoric remains of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys.
PRIVATE LANDS, PUBLIC DESTRUCTION
These mound builder sites are located almost invariably on private
lands, and though it is true in some few cases the owners have for
sentimental reasons maintained the integrity of the mounds and
earthworks allotted on their property, in the vast majority of cases the
commercial instinct has prevailed, and the original outlines are fast
obliterated by time and the abrading wear of the white man’s plow.
Archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, indeed patriotic Americans
of every class, have interest in preserving these relics of bygone days.
Every state in the Union from Wisconsin to the Gulf and from
Virginia to Nebraska has more or fewer of the mounds and earthworks,
which were built hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago. In
Mississippi and elsewhere they can be seen from the car windows of
railroad trains or from carriages on the highways. These mounds are
mostly terraced and truncated pyramids, in shape usually square or
rectangular, but sometimes hexagonal or octagonal. They differ greatly
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in size. One in West Virginia is 70 feet high and 1,000 feet in
circumference.
The Cahokia Mound, in Illinois, opposite the northern section of the
city of St. Louis, is the largest of them all, rising in terraces from a base
of 1,150 feet by 700 feet to a height of 100 feet and covering an area
larger than that occupied by the Great Pyramid of Egypt. In Ohio and
other states there are mounds approaching these in magnitude, but
generally they range from six to thirty feet in height.
The Fort Ancient earthwork on the Little Miami River, in the contour
roughly of a Figure 8, and about 22 feet above the surface at its highest,
is now enthroned by a public park and watched over by the Ohio
Historical Society.
Cahokia was once one of the grandest capitals of this extremely
ancient mound-building culture and the artistry of the site alone should
have given it supreme protection, but as will be seen in the following
shocking expose of criminal neglect on the part of the Smithsonian and
the Parks Division, as early as 1828, these ancient mound sites were
already in peril of total destruction.
The following story appeared as a lavishly illustrated Sunday feature
in the Frederick News Post in Virginia, but this article was also
nationally syndicated. Again, the following are the actual headlines and
in-depth quotes from this very provocative piece of historical
muckraking on behalf of protecting these mound sites from eventual
sure destruction.
THE GREAT CAHOKIA MOUND, WHICH
SHOULD BE A NATIONAL MONUMENT, IN
DANGER OF DESTRUCTION
WORKS OF PREHISTORIC MOUND BUILDERS
ARE SCATTERED ACROSS THE UNITED
STATES.
BY RENE BACHE
FREDERICK NEWS POST, JANUARY 20, 1928
150
The largest and most impressive memorial of the prehistoric mound
builders is in danger of destruction, and the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology
is anxious that it be declared a National monument and thereby
preserved.
It is the great Cahokia Mound, across the river from St. Louis, in
Illinois. Rising in the midst of a level plain, and rectangular in shape, it
is ninety-nine feet high and 998 feet long (100 feet by 1000 feet more
likely), an artificial hill that may be seen from the railroad approaching
St. Louis from the east.
COMPARED TO THE PYRAMIDS
Students of antiquity regard it as comparable in archaeological interest
to the pyramids of Egypt. It is believed to have been, in pre-historic
times, the site of a temple, which may have been comparable in size
and grandeur to the ancient Sun Temple whose ruins were recently
discovered in the far southwest. That structure built of cut stone was
400 feet long. It had only one narrow door and a curious detail that has
been preserved is a peephole through which a watcher could inspect
persons wishing to enter.
PLEA TO SAVE THE MOUNDS
Here is another of the many public pleas to save the mounds from
destruction. In this case from the 1960s, it is a large mound complex
located in Whitewater that was scheduled for a suburban subdivision.
RESIDENTS TRY TO SAVE MOUNDS
JANESVILLE GAZETTE, AUGUST 13, 1965
The mounds, covering about 6 Vi acres of land, range in height from
about lVi to five feet. All have holes or pits on their tops and sides.
Lormerly situated in lands comprising the Town of Whitewater, the
mounds, came under City of Whitewater jurisdiction in 1964 with the
annexation of former Tratt Larm property, purchased by Buckingham
Developers. Dr. Cummings has urged local acquisition of this land
from the Buckingham firm, which presently “owes” the city space in
the subdivision equivalent to two lots, having agreed to a planning
commission proposal whereby developers of new sub-divisions within
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the city would allocate a certain amount of space to playground usage.
Numerous other groups have sent letters either to Dr. Cummings or
City Manager Ronald DeMaad to save the mounds as a historical park
site.
CEREMONIAL COPPER-HELMETED AND ARMORED MEN
This report from Cahokia is indicative of the poor quality of the official
reports from excavations at the site. As opposed to the detailed
descriptions of copper armor found elsewhere in this book (see Many
Skeletons of an... . Indiana’s Eight-Foot... !, this “official” description
merely notes that helmeted and cop-per-armored men were found, with
no description of the finds under discussion.
ON THE CASE OF THE SEVENTY DESTROYED MOUNDS
In this report it is noted that seventy mounds that once surrounded a
great mound were destroyed in the construction of the city of St. Louis.
With this kind of rampant, wholesale destruction, it is easy to
understand why the true history of this site remains obscured to the
present day.
HUNDREDS OF MISSING SKELETONS
A true accounting of the number of skeletons found at Cahokia is also
shrouded in the same mystery as the destroyed mounds at the site.
Officially, there is almost no discussion of the hundreds of skeletons
exhumed from this site.
The details and physical descriptions of the finds made during the
1922 dig led by archaeologist Warren K. Morehead of Phillips
Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, are not very detailed and are
downright evasive when it comes to the skeletons unearthed during his
dig. One might even go so far as to say that Morehead was there to
bury evidence, not uncover it.
ANOTHER PYRAMID FOUND
ELISBURG JOURNAL, 1886
W. H. Scoville of Allegheny, and his brother-in-law from Connecticut,
while hunting squirrels in the woods towards Irish settlement, found a
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pyramidal mound 18 or 20 feet long, walled at the base with stone.
Growing on it were several trees, some of which were six inches
through. Mr. Scoville, and son Esca, exhumed two skeletons, one of a
dog and one of a tall man, about 8 feet in length. Most of the bones
perished away when exposed to the air and handled, but the jaw bone
as yet is in Mr. Scoville’s possession and is large enough to fit outside
his own.
Within the last few months excavations made in the Cahokia Mound
have brought to light a number of objects made of sheet copper and
representing helmeted and armored men. They were presumably used
for some ceremonial purpose and, fashioned very artistically. . . .
The great mound was formerly surrounded by about seventy lesser
mounds, some of them forty feet high, which have been destroyed by
the plow. . ..
There was a GIGANTIC EARTHWORK of the kind, 319 feet long
and 158 feet wide, close to St. Louis, but in the later sixties [i.e., 1860s]
the city grew over it and wiped it out.
Digging at the time of the destruction, disclosed inside of it a huge
burial chamber seventy feet long, built of logs, which contained
HUNDREDS OF SKELETONS. . . .
CAHOKIA ORIGINALLY HAD OVER 150
MOUNDS
APPLETON POST-CRESCENT, SEPTEMBER 20, 1921
Appleton, Wisconsin: Large earthworks, constructed by the mound
builders in the prehistoric past, rise conspicuously in the Illinois
lowlands, about ten miles from St. Louis. In several groups, there are
about 150 mounds, the largest known as Cahokia Mound, being 1080
feet long, 702 feet wide, and 102 feet high, containing 107,000 cubic
yards of earth. The background to these structures built by an unknown
race, in the unknown long ago, is a high and sweeping limestone ridge.
Scientists are now opening the smaller mounds in an endeavor to
learn of the people who formed them. Of all the prehistoric remnants in
North America, the mounds of these groups are the largest, and it is
believed, the oldest. As the earthworks seem to have been undisturbed
153
by the Indians, French, Spaniards, and Americans, the scientists hope to
dig up skeletons, utensils, and relics that will identify the race that
inhabited parts of America before the Redskins.
The exploration of one of the smallest mounds has uncovered what
may have been a burial place. Several skeletons have been found in it;
next to them red pottery of the mound builders’ period. Dr. Warren K.
Morehead, of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., who is in charge of
the research, expects to dig up a complete skeleton.
NO RECORDED SKELETON FINDS FROM MAIN CAHOKIA
MOUND?
Despite the fact that one of the main St. Louis mounds, with more than
one hundred human skeletons, was publicly destroyed and desecrated,
we are asked to believe that no one has ever made any examination of
the nation’s largest mound, which has been compared in size to the
Great Pyramid. This is despite the fact that every other main mound in
the country seems to have been breached at one time or the other in the
past.
LITTLE CHANCE OF FURTHER
EXPLORATION
EDWARDSVILLE INTELLIGENCER, NOVEMBER 14, 1937
No extensive explorations have been made into the mound at Cahokia.
Some years ago members of the Ramey family, former owners, dug a
tunnel 90 feet toward the center of the mound. A piece of lead ore was
the only article of interest found. Since the entire area has been
converted into a state park, there is little probability that any future
explorations will be made in any of the mounds.
THE HONEYWELL MOUNDS NEXT LARGEST
The next largest mounds at Honeywell, Ohio, were excavated about
thirty years ago. Relics taken from the Cahokia group, at the city limits
of East St. Louis, indicated that the Ohio residents traded with those of
Illinois. Much interest attaches to the present investigation, as there is a
prospect that things of great historic significance will be unearthed. It is
proposed to preserve the largest mounds in a state or national park.
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CAHOKIA NAMED BY THE FRENCH
EXPLORER LA SALLE
Monks Mound with the exception of several smaller ones, is the
farthest north of a group of 72 (a very significant number). Years ago
the mound was given the name Cahokia Mound. It was named for a
tribe of Indians encountered by La Salle, a Frenchman, in his early
explorations.
On the southern side of the mound, is a terrace, about 30 feet above
the base. The terrace contains an area of over two acres. This is the
plateau which may have been used for religious purposes.
Monks Mound is a parallelogram, the longer dimensions extending
north and south. The other mounds in the group are of various
formations. The bottom of one is circular while another is almost
perfectly square. A third along the highway has the longer dimensions
extending from east and west.
A HOLLOW METAL BIRD FOUND
OAKLAND TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 20, 1925
Many objects of strange form, of undoubted aboriginal manufacture,
have been found in the mounds. For instance, a hollow metal bird with
many perforations, and small vessels of odd shapes with numerous
holes bored through them. For what purpose could such things be
meant? From a mound near Chillicothe came a carving in soft
serpentine representing in really exquisite detail a duck riding on a fish.
This, however, was a pipe. The pre-Columbian Indians were all of them
smokers of tobacco and the mounds yield great numbers of pipes.
In one group of mounds were found hundreds of jaw bones of human
beings, bears, and other animals, cut in a most curious way, so as to
leave in each case a thin slice of the alveolar structure holding a row of
teeth. The work must have been done with a saw so exceedingly thin
and sharp that it is a puzzle to know how the Indians could have
obtained such a tool. But a more important question is, why should the
jaws have been cut that way?
The United States Geological Survey has made a map of the eastern
half of the United States showing the entire area sprinkled with red
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dots, each one standing for an ancient mound or group of mounds. Such
mounds are found all over the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific
and from the Canadian border to the Gulf. About 10 percent of them
have been more or less excavated, yielding numerous articles of white
manufacture, such as knives, brass kettles, beads, and so forth. Nearly
all of the other objects unearthed are similar to those in use by the
Indians today.
Some of the mounds were domiciliary; the old-time Indians lived on
top of them because the elevation was an advantage for defense. Thus,
a large mound might be a village site. Others were used for purposes of
religious ceremonies, yet others were cemeteries. A dead man was
buried in a small tumulus, usually in a sitting posture. When another
died he was interred in the same place, more earth being added. At
every interment the mound grew bigger, and thus in the course of
centuries it attained huge size. The usual form of a mound was that of a
broad, low-topped cone, which might be eighty or ninety feet high and
three hundred feet in diameter at the base. Others were rectangular. Yet
others were built like walls, twenty to forty feet wide. The purpose of
these last is a mystery; they were not used for burial, and the use to
which they were put is likely to remain forever unknown.
MYSTERIOUS EFFIGY MOUNDS FOUND IN MANY PLACES
Although the Cahokia complex stands out because of its size, many
other finds of mounds and their contents that are no less fascinating
have been made around the United States. Perhaps the most intriguing
are the many mounds built in the shape of animals.
SKELETON FOUND IN MOUND NEAR ALTON
REVIVES HOPE OF FACTS ON ANCIENT
RACE
MAY HAVE BEEN ABODE OF PEOPLE
ANTEDATING THE INDIANS
ALTON EVENING TELEGRAPH, NOVEMBER 10, 1933
Archeological interest in the Alton vicinity is being revived since
156
excavations on the Charles Oerson farm, located on the Newbern road
west of the Alton-Jerseyville road have indicated that the several
mounds located there are ruins of that race of pre-American Indian
dwellers on this continent the mound builders.
ONE-FOOT THICK MIDDEN OF MUSSEL
SHELLS
It was the curiosity of Charles Gerson and Ray Smith that led to the
investigation of the dirt formations. Tuesday and Wednesday of this
week their curiosity was appeased when a skeleton was unearthed
several feet from the surface. Digging deeper more bones and pottery
were found. The most interesting, and perhaps the most valuable, of the
relics found by two men was a large collection of mussel shells, placed
one upon the other to the thickness of a foot. The shells crumbled when
exposed to the air, but the fact that they did so may be the factor to
determine the antiquity of the mounds as they have been in previous
discoveries.
THE DEVIL BIRD PAINTING OF ALTON
BLUFF
Should the mounds prove to be as ancient as the mussel shells indicate
there would be a possibility that from the ruins on the Gerson farm aid
would be derived to establish the antiquity of the time-honored and be-
legended Plasa devil bird painting that for centuries graced the Alton
bluffs.
Paleolithic ruins are the most ancient to be found in America and
come from the early glacial period. Even at this time the trace of the
mongoloid type is found, giving rise to the theory of the immigrations
to America over the land bridge that existed between Europe and
America and, Alaska and Siberia. Then centuries or perhaps ages later
came the mound builders who were neither a Neolithic race nor
American Indians.
THE GREAT FRASER SHELL MIDDEN
Mound Builders were also builders of shell-heaps. The Great Fraser
Midden in British Columbia is the greatest known discovery of the
shell-heap builders; it is built on the glacial gravel before the post-
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glacial vegetation had started, and when discovered was covered by a
forest from 680 to 700 years old. The shells found crumbled when
exposed, but the later mound builders also left mussel shells behind,
showing there was a connection between them.
FIVE TYPES OF MOUNDS BUILT
There were five distinct types of mounds built; the effigy or animal¬
shaped ones, burial and ground work ones combined, burial mounds for
that purpose alone, the stockade type, and the pyramidal type, of which
the Cahokia mound at East St. Louis is the best known example.
This newly found group of mounds might be of the latter type. But
before a label is put on this discovery there is the possibility that it is a
burial place of the roving men who succeeded the Mound Builders in
this territory. Though no great importance may be placed on the
excavation near Alton should it be proved to belong to the American
Indian burial ground division, the wealth and beauty of the American
Indian relics taken from this vicinity prior to this time will be
augmented.
A LINK WITH THE PYRAMIDS
On the other hand, should the discovery be found to correspond with
Cahokia and be of the same class, all theories and the romances
connected with East St. Louis will be extended to here. Between
Cahokia and the early pyramid builders of Central America there is a
connecting link. Should the Alton findings be found to be cousins to the
Cahokia cluster, it may become a link in the pre-history record of the
American continent, a chain of records that stretches from Asia to
Alaska, British Columbia, Rio Grande, Guatemala, Yucatan, Florida,
and is as near to us as East St. Louis, and has relics ranging from
mussel shell heaps to the casa grandes and pueblos of the southwest,
down to the more modern calendars and sculptures of the Mayas, and
the heavy gold and earth-work of the Itzas, Quiches, and Aztecs. It all
depends upon the importance of the slim stratum of mussel shells. To
date, mussel shells have not figured as relics found in the graves of the
red American Indian, but are a characteristic of the mound builders.
The account that follows describes a particularly stunning serpent
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mound found in Quincy, Illinois. Inside the mound skeletons were
found buried with the skeleton of a snake covering them.
HUGE SERPENT MOUND
HISTORICAL RECORD, QUINCY, ILLINOIS, 1892
A huge serpent mound was recently discovered near Quincy, Illinois, in
Adams County. This mound was built by a class of pre-historic people
now known as the serpent worshippers. In the mound were found
skeletons upon which the bones of a snake reposed.
THE GREAT SERPENT MOUND OF OHIO
ENCHANTS
RALEIGH REGISTER, JUNE 19, 1963
The Great Serpent Mound of Ohio, appeals peculiarly to the
imagination. It measures from the upper jaw to the tip of the tail 1254
feet, rising at the head to a height of five feet from the surface and
extending in graceful and perfect convolutions, but with receding
height to the tail.
The serpent’s mouth is open and within the arc of the jaws is a
monumental earthwork shaped like an egg, as if about to be swallowed.
This striking example of the mound builders’ art about which the fancy
of the twentieth century weaves traditions of serpent worship in a
forgotten civilization is fortunate to be preserved from the ravages of
time and vandalism. This is as reported in a feature story about a bill
introduced in 1905 to save the mounds from immediate destruction.
As is the case with Michigan’s copper mines, the most stunning
aspect of Wisconsin’s mound building culture is not the plethora of
giants unearthed in the area, but the amazing animal effigy mounds that
covered the state like a blanket of woodland imagery. It has been
estimated that in one county alone in Wisconsin, there were originally
over ten thousand effigy mounds. It is no exaggeration to say that
Wisconsin was an ancient version of the Nazca plateau in South
America, which is famous worldwide for the thousands of animal
images cut into the bedrock there. The images that covered Wisconsin
were endless and ran the gamut from human forms to snakes, lizards,
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foxes, rabbits, fish, and mammoths. Unfortunately no official attempt
has ever been made to save these mounds from destruction, and at this
point in time the vast majority of mounds that once blanketed the state
have been destroyed.
In one notable case, it was reported that an eight-foot-tall giant was
unearthed near Pelican Lake, while in another report from Westport,
giant burials were found in association with ten-pound axes and an
eight-foot-high wall, which was fifteen-feet thick and ran along a river
embankment for 1,500 feet. It was noted that the wall was made from
hard red bricks, some of an immense size. In the woods near the shore,
a mound was opened that contained a giant buried with several rolls of
textiles and a finely finished grooved stone ax.
EFFIGY MOUNDS A WOODLAND
WONDERLAND
OAKLAND TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 20, 1925
The so-called “effigy mounds” are confined almost wholly to
Wisconsin and a small part of Iowa. The entire valley of Prairie du
Chien Township is dotted with these mounds, shaped to represent
bears, deer, rabbits, antlered elks, and other animals. They form
veritable droves, all headed, like the river, to the southwest. The
existence of these mounds in such numbers and of so great a magnitude
proves that there must formerly have been in that region a large
population permanently resident and settled.
They doubtless depended for a livelihood chiefly on farming, as did
the eastern tribes until the whites disturbed them. It is worth
mentioning that some of their mounds, representing birds, have a
spread of 250 feet from wing tip to wing tip, and a remarkable feature
of most of them is the imitative curving and rounding of the bodies of
the sculptured animals. There are hundreds of these effigy mounds
overlooking the Mississippi River, located on bluffs, and hundreds
more across the river in Iowa. They are thought to represent the
heraldic “totems” of various clans. Thus the Bear clan built mounds in
the shape of a bear, the Lizard clan in the form of a lizard, the Snake
clan in the likeness of a serpent, and so on.
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STRANGE, ANCIENT, SUPERIOR
ARROWHEADS FOUND
Around the mound sites in various parts of La Crosse County,
archaeologists and parties of Boy Scouts have found many arrow heads
of strange design. These points range from the battle or war points to
slender points, evidently used for the purpose of shooting small game.
Some of the points, which had been found in the area of West Salem,
are of obsidian while others found south of La Crosse near the junction
of highways 35 and 14, are of flint. While some are of Indian
manufacture, others have been identified as being of mound builder
construction, and a study of the symmetry and design of both works
immediately shows the superiority of the mound builders in
manufacturing these artifacts. Scrapers, axes, and pottery have also
been found, together with occasional skeleton remains. Beaded ware
and middens (refuse from food stuffs) have also been found in La
Crosse County.
GIANT SKELETON FOUND
MASSIVE HUMAN BONES AND INDIAN RELICS
UNEARTHED NEAR PELICAN LAKE
NEW NORTH WISCONSIN, JULY 23, 1908
That human beings of enormous size inhabited this section of this
country ages ago was proven last Sunday, when the massive skeleton of
an Indian was unearthed near Pelican Lake. The interesting discovery
was made by George Patton and L. H. Eaton, two Chicago tourists,
who are spending the summer there.
For several days the men noticed a mound on their travels through
the woods, and, at last led by curiosity, decided to excavate it.
Procuring spades they fell to work and after digging down to a depth of
about four feet were surprised to find the bones of a large human foot
protruding through the earth.
Digging further, they gradually uncovered the perfect form of a
giant. The skeleton was nearly 8 feet in height and the arms extended
several inches below the hips. Buried with the bones were numerous
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stone weapons and trinkets. Among these were a curious stone hatchet,
a copper knife, several strange copper rings, and a necklace made of the
tusks of some prehistoric animal.
The skeleton is no doubt that of an Indian who was one of a tribe of
giants who roamed this part of the state over one thousand years ago.
RAILROAD WORKERS UNEARTH GIANT
AN INDIAN MOUND OPENED
EAU CLAIRE DAILY FREE PRESS, OCTOBER 7, 1873
A few days ago the men engaged in building the road bed of the Green
Bay and Winona railroad, struck an Indian mound near Arcadia. It had
been in view for some days, and no little speculation was indulged in as
to what the excavation would develop from this cemetery of the red
man.
The discovery exceeded all anticipations. The skeleton of an Indian
was found of such dimensions as to indicate that the frame must have
been that of a giant. The jaw bone easily enclosed the face of the largest
laborer to be found on the work. The thigh bones were more like those
of a horse than a man, hair heavy and remarkably well-preserved.
Pieces of blanket in which the body had been wrapped were taken
out in a tolerable state of preservation. A number of Mexican coins
were also found.
The unusual size of the skeleton has excited considerable interest,
and the curiosities will be carefully preserved for exhibition.
PERFECT MAN-SHAPED MOUND
_ SHEBOYGAN PRESS, NOVEMBER 10, 1913 _
WAUPACA HAS AN ALMOST PERFECT MAN¬
SHAPED MOUND
Destruction of this was threatened by the street car companies, but the
various women’s clubs rallied to the rescue with a fund which has
ensured the preservation of the prehistoric relic.
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ONE WISCONSIN COUNTY HAS OVER 500
ANIMAL EFFIGY MOUNDS
On Doty Island, near Menasha, several mounds have been found of
well-defined animal shapes, while in Crawford County are 500 of these
tumuli, 100 of which are located in Prairie du Chien and Wauzeka.
The recent discovery in Portage County, by W. A. Titus of the
Wisconsin Archaeology Society, of a number of Indian mounds, which
have yielded a number of interesting relics, has called to the minds of
the members of the state society a large number of tumuli in effigy
shape that have been placed on official record in late years. It is of
interest to note that, as of now, all known effigy mounds are within the
boundaries of Wisconsin.
734 MOUNDS NEAR DEVIL S LAKE
In seven townships lying about Devil’s Lake there are 734 mounds.
Best known of these is a bird with outstretched wings, extending 150
feet, tail forked, and wings bent near the tip. The bird seems to be
flying toward the lake, the shore of which is but a few rods distant. The
head, breast, and body are several feet in height.
WISCONSIN EFFIGY MOUND CAPITAL OF
THE WORLD
According to Dr. Cummings, “at one time, probably 20,000 mounds
existed in the north-central. Midwest area” and of all effigies
constructed, about 95 per cent were built in the territorial limits of
Wisconsin, making the state the “effigy mounds capital of the world.”
Cummings estimated the mounds in Whitewater were built between
AD 200 and 1200 and were different from Aztalan mounds in that the
local mounds are burial mounds, lacking deposits of artifacts of any
significance.
THE BIG FIND IN WISCONSIN
Here is an inventory of the largest effigy and shaped mounds found in
Wisconsin. They are in the shapes of a mink, panther, turtle, several
massive birds, and several geometric figures.
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The earthwork mounds resemble various shapes of varying sizes:
mink, 348 long; panther, 120 feet long; bird, body, 57 feet wide, and
wings, 69 feet long; conical, 32 feet wide; oval, 32 by 90 feet; conical,
38 feet wide; bird, body, 60 feet wide, 94 feet long; turtle, 143 feet
wide, 100 feet long; tapering, 145 feet long; oval, 37 by 60 feet; and
tapering, 195 feet long.
In the area around the Dells in Kilbourn, Wisconsin, the discovery of
a two-hundred-foot-long giant lizard mound was reported. At an
adjacent mound complex consisting of eight to twelve conical mounds
as tall as twelve feet, another effigy mound in the shape of a deer was
noted.
Mounds Depict Deer and Lizards
One of the mounds at the Dells, near Kilbourn, represents a giant
lizard, 200 feet long, the head pointing to the west.
A few miles from the city is a curious group. It occupies a plot of
ground five rods wide and 18 rods long. Near the southwest corner
is the figure of a deer. To the north is a lizard, several rods long;
while around its head are a series of eight or ten conical mounds,
some 12 feet in height.
NO TRADITION FOR THE MOUNDS AMONG THE SIOUX
It is evident that the handiwork of the builders of these mounds dates
far back into the history of the west, as the Sioux Indians have known
the soil for 300 years, and they have no traditions concerning mound
building within that range of time.
MOST NORTHWESTERN SITE OF THE MOUND BUILDERS
The Ross Lake mound group in Wisconsin was the most northwestern
site in the continental United States at the time it was investigated and
reported in 1935, but since then numerous other mounds have been
found farther north in the western United States and Canada.
SUPERIOR QUALITY OF WORKMANSHIP
The researchers at the Ross Lake site noted that extremely ancient
pottery of superior workmanship was found in association with the later
and much cruder pottery of the modern American Indian tribes in the
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area. The earliest form of cord-design pottery can be traced to the
Jomon culture in Japan and has been dated as early as 14,000 to 10,000
BCE. The Caucasian origin of the Jomon people is still under debate,
but cord-design pottery has been discovered in Wales as well as in the
United States, and the swirling design patterns on early Jomon jars
resemble the spirals found in later Celtic designs.
EVIDENCE FOR THE WISCONSIN MAMMOTH
Not only have mammoth and mastodon remains been found in
Wisconsin, but bones, tusks, and teeth have been found in association
with mound builder burials. In Minnesota, an effigy mound in the shape
of an elephant or mastodon has also been reported.
THIRTY-ONE MOUNDS OPENED AT ROSS
LAKE IN 1931
BY CECIL L. MUNSON
_ WISCONSIN TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 2, 1935 _
During excavations recently conducted by Philleo Nash at the site of
the Indian Mounds at Ross Lake, three miles south of Nekoosha, many
illuminating evidences of fact concerning early Indian life in this area
were discovered.
An excellent group of mounds, built by the ancient forebears of the
teepee-builders, may be seen in a fine state of preservation on the
shores of Ross Lake, three miles south of the city of Nekoosha and
about one mile back from the eastern bank of the Wisconsin River. Mr.
Nash was majoring in social anthropology at the University of
Wisconsin when, in the summer of 1931, he spent four weeks
excavating some of these mounds as work preliminary to writing a
university thesis in which he hoped to classify the group in its proper
anthropological category.
AS A BOY, NASH SAW ANIMAL MOUNDS IN
THE WOODS
As a boy he had seen and wondered about these same Ross Lake
Mounds, and he knew that, while most mounds found in groups in
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southeastern Wisconsin rise above the general contour of the earth to a
height of little more than 2 feet as an average, their shape and
distribution is of historical import.
The mounds at Ross Lake, classified by Mr. Nash as effigy mounds
because of the presence of one mound outlined in the shape of an
animal, possibly a beaver, were of special interest to him as a student of
early Indian mound building because of the presence in the
neighborhood of this effigy, of a number of more or less circular and
conical mounds averaging 25 inches high by 18 feet in diameter. In the
part of the mound area at Ross Lake, still untouched by the plow, or by
the spades of marauders, he found 28 such round-topped mounds and
three others of various types.
Furthermore, the effigy mound proved to be of special interest to Mr.
Nash when he found that it had not been entered and that, as an original
deposit of earth over 95 feet long and 33 feet thick through from the
haunch-part to the tail, it was as fine an example of the effigy-type
mound as could be found in Wisconsin.
ALREADY PARTIALLY DESTROYED
Mr. Nash ascertained that the 31 mounds extant in the group today are
but part of the original work of the mound builders on this site. Crops
under cultivation for the last 70 years have doubtless made erosions
through the southern part of the original group, obliterating a large
number of mounds.
The 31 extant mounds are protected against erosion by a good stand
of small timber that has overgrown the mound site, preventing the
heavy rains from doing damage to their contours. Being in this dense
corner of wooded land, the mounds are hardly visible to the untrained
eye. Stretching but a few inches over 2 feet above the sod line of the
lake shore at most points, these hummocks of earth have become
covered with a dense growth of grass, and that has contributed to hiding
the mound builder’s work from random relic hunters.
Another characteristic of the group at Ross Lake was made by Mr.
Nash on the basis of the external appearance of the mound number 23,
called the pointed lineal. This mound, the largest at Ross Lake, over
495 feet long and with an ovoid head, has the characteristics of many
other smaller mounds in Wisconsin, but in size it is matched by only
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one other mound in the United States, the Great Serpent Mound in
Ohio.
In a map that he made of the Ross Lake shoreline showing the shape
of the 31 mounds, Mr. Nash shows that the most outstanding mound of
the group is the long needle-like mound numbered 23, having a bulbous
head end fully 25 feet in diameter, and a body that tapers off gradually
into the surrounding sod floor to a length of 495 feet.
Using the most approved methods and exercising every care, Mr.
Nash found during his excavation of 16,000 cubic feet of earth, that the
material used in constructing the mounds was in some cases a kind of
red-black sand of a type similar to the subsoil strata of earth found in
this vicinity, indicating that the builders had in some cases gone to a
considerable depth to find mound material that suited their work.
The most consistently general characteristic of the Ross Lake Mound
Group, according to Mr. Nash, is the presence of colored sand in
saucer-like pits in almost all of the entrances. Often he found this sand
surrounding some bone deposit, although no human bone was
unearthed in any of the mounds at the Ross Lake mounds.
It became known through the Nash investigation that the Ross Lake
Mound Group locates the point of farthest northwest dispersion of the
culture type of the mound-building predecessors of the teepee-building
Indians.
Mr. Nash also discovered fragments of a type of native pottery that
offered interesting possibilities for exhaustive study. It is well known
that the ordinary clay pottery-work done by the teepee-dwellers at the
time of the white man’s coming was always crude and rarely if ever
serviceable.
In the Ross Lake Mounds, however, Mr. Nash discovered a type of
pottery far superior to the usual run of later Indian clay products.
To begin with it is evident that upon examining the fragments, that
the mound builders were careful in the mixing and molding of their
materials. Probably using wooden paddles, wound about with wood or
grass, the pottery makers produced strange “cord-imprint” designs on
their baked-clay products.
This cord-imprint effect is found only in rare cases in Indian pottery
work. On one broken piece of pottery, these strange cord imprints were
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found to be present both on the inside and outside surfaces, revealing a
great amount of skill and patience in the men who made the pottery.
Mr. Nash’s discovery of cord-imprint pottery at the Ross Lake Mounds
sets off the mound builders of that locality as craftsmen far superior to
the pottery-making mound builders of the southeastern Wisconsin
group.
After the discoveries so far mentioned, Mr. Nash made a study of the
mound builders from another angle. He began by making
classifications of the mound builders’ habits on the basis of the shapes
of the various mounds and the relation of those shapes to the shapes of
similar mounds found in other areas.
By this method the mound marked number 3 and classified as an
effigy mound, was found to be related in general type of contour and
surface appearance of burial pits within the mound, to other groups of
mounds of the effigy type in the Shawno, Oconto, and Kraniz Creek
areas of Wisconsin.
As the evidence, which has been found in the gravel deposits of La
Crosse county, shows in the form of teeth, portions of ivory tusks, etc.,
large herds of hairy mammoths, which we will call scientifically
“Elphius Americanum Wisconsinatis,” roamed what is today La Crosse
county. These giant mammals were about nine to ten feet in height and
possessed enormous curved tusks, which were very formidable
weapons of offense or defense, whatever the case might have been.
Teeth are usually well-preserved, and from studies made on teeth,
which have been found in different parts of Wisconsin, including La
Crosse county, it appears that moss and lichen composed the diet of
these long-vanished brutes. Dental trouble was no doubt unknown
among the hairy mammoths and their teeth are in a most excellent state
of preservation.
MAMMOTH-SHAPED MOUND IN MINNESOTA
Here is a report of mammoth-shaped mounds being found along the
Mississippi River in Wabasha, Minnesota.
MAMMOTH IMAGE DEBATED
BY CECIL L. MUNSON
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WISCONSIN TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 2, 1935
While several pictoglyphs evidently left by the mound builders have
been found farther up the Mississippi river in the Wabasha, Minnesota
area, showing images of the mammoths, yet, it can hardly be assumed
on this basis, that the mammoths were still here when man came. This
of course is open to debate.
Erroneously “dubbed” as Indian mounds, several artificial earth
tumuli in the form of burial, effigy, fortification, and ceremonial
mounds, are to be found in La Crosse county. These mounds appear in
the topographical plane in such areas as La Crosse, Onalaska, and West
Salem, and only the trained eye of the archaeologist is able to
distinguish these mounds from ordinary uplifts of earth and rock.
PANTHERS AND ALTARS
Here is an account of the rare opening of one of Wisconsin’s main altar
mound complexes, which has earthworks of animal-shaped mounds
surrounding it.
WISCONSIN PANTHER MOUND OPENED
WEEKLY WISCONSIN, DECEMBER 26, 1891
Some 30 miles west of Milwaukee, on the banks of the Fox River, are
interesting earth works. The high bluffs on the banks of the river offer
excellent views of the surrounding country for miles around. At the site
of an ancient village, a long neck of land extends into a marsh
containing vast quantities of wild rice. Along this high neck of land are
found many observation and sacrificial mounds, also a few effigy
mounds.
One of the most prominent and imposing of the effigy mounds
represents a panther. Near the head of this mound a number of quite
remarkable depressions were discovered, having evidently been used
for the purpose of storing away whatever valuables the inhabitants of
this village may have possessed in case of any threatened danger.
On the summit of one of the high hills overlooking this ancient
valley is an altar mound surrounded by groups of effigies. One of its
peculiarities is that it is composed of two large burial mounds
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connected by an oblong mound. Two massive burial mounds by the
lowlands nearby, upon being excavated, yielded up large quantities of
bones and numerous fragments of rudely ornamented pottery.
INDIAN LEGENDS OF GIANTS
The skeleton was nearly eight feet in height, and the arms extended
several inches below the hips. The skeleton is no doubt that of an
Indian who was one of a tribe of giants who roamed this part of the
state over one thousand years ago.
The Chippewa Indians of our present day tell many legends
regarding the prowess and strength of the members of their tribe moons
back. One tale was of a giant warrior, who was over ten arrow lengths
high and had sufficient strength to uplift tall trees by the roots and hurl
huge boulders through the air.
MOUND USED FOR GAME DRIVES
A number of long narrow mounds are placed in such a position as to
enclose a large area of land, and this enclosure, it would seem, was
used as a game drive. The game was driven from the plateau, down
between the lines of the two long mounds, and into this enclosure,
where it became an easy prey for the hunter.
The mounds at that distant date were quite high, and the opening
between them may have been palisaded. Thus the inhabitants of this
village were amply supplied with food from the forest, the prairie, and
the river.
THUNDERBIRD EFFIGY MOUND VISITED
Near the city of Waukeesha, another village has been identified by the
late Dr. Lapham, and this place was next visited.
It is situated on the high bluffs overlooking a giant swamp. The
swamp is even in the present day almost completely over grown with
wild rice. It is worthy of note that a tribe of Indians is encamped upon
the site of this ancient village at the present time, thus showing the
desirability of the location.
The place is guarded by observation and effigy mounds. At the
southern extremity of the line of artwork, is an interesting effigy mound
of imposing appearance, evidently intended to represent a bird with the
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wings spread in the act of flying. The head is directed to the south. The
wings are long and narrow, and measure 112 feet each way from the
body to the extremities. The body and neck are small and the length of
the tail is 72 feet. [For other significant instances of the number 72, see
the sections about the Monks Mound , and Mound 72 .1 It is quite a large
and well-formed effigy, and is different from the other bird mounds in
having an angle in the wings.
FOXES AND SQUIRRELS DOT THE
LANDSCAPE
On the high bluffs many beautiful effigies were discovered, a large
majority of them being in the shape of squirrels. The squirrels, some of
them large of size, were in every conceivable attitude. One interesting
effigy mound represented a fox running, with his head turned around
and looking behind him.
The groups on the bottom lands and bluffs adjoining seem to form
connecting links. There are three or four lines of effigies on the bluffs,
and three or four groups of parallel mounds on the bottom lands. They
were arranged in a large circle enclosing an area of some twenty or
thirty acres.
THE STRANGE SUGAR-LOAF MOUNDS
In the town of Westport a strange departure from the usual method of
building mounds was noticed. The mounds referred to are of the usual
conical or “sugar-loaf” form. They are six in number and are situated
on the level prairie surrounded by the river and marshes. At the base of
each a large perfectly circular pit was excavated and the soil thus
obtained was used in the construction of the mound next to it. It was
noticeable that great care had been taken to have the base of the
mounds of the same size as the circular pits.
Upon excavating one of these mounds the remains of a skeleton that
had apparently been cremated was discovered. All the bones, which
had not been burned by the fire, had kept their original position
standing upright and apparently quite undisturbed in a kind of grayish-
colored clay, whereas those portions, which had extended above the
clay, had been consumed by the fire, and the surface of the clay was, as
far as the fire had extended, covered by a layer of wood ashes, mingled
171
with a layer of small pieces of charred wood and burned bones,
together with bones belonging to the spine, ribs, and other parts of the
body that had been more or less injured by the fire.
TEN-POUND AXES AND LIMESTONE SLABS
A short distance to the north a very peculiar mound covered with flat
lime stones was discovered. The stones had evidently been placed over
the mound for the purpose of preventing the wild beasts from
penetrating it. Upon excavating this mound it was found to contain a
number of charred bones, finely-ornamented pottery, and several
implements of stone, very unique and cunning in their design.
Several axes of stone were found, varying in weight from four
ounces to ten pounds, with grooves to admit the width for a handle.
Also wedges ten inches in length, a double-bitted curved bark peeler,
flint flakes for removing dirt, from 5 to 15 inches in length, stone
hammers without grooves, perforated ceremonial stones of different
sizes, and different types of arrow heads for shooting game in a tree,
and those of a keener point for animals of a tougher skin and the small,
keen, unextractable ones for war purposes only.
SPECIAL ARROWS FOR SHOOTING FISH
Some of the arrow points were evidently manufactured for the purpose
of shooting fish. These points show great ingenuity in their construction
and are finely finished. They are barbed, and from a straight base the
point inclines at an angle of exactly 45 degrees, which angle would,
when the point was shot in the ordinary manner, cause it to deviate the
distance required to strike any object under the water.
EIGHT-FEET-HIGH AND FIFTEEN-FEET-
THICK WALLS OF THE GIANTS FOUND
About one mile up the river from this place we discovered what
appeared to be the remains of an entrenched camp on the west bank of
the stream. The northern or upper portion is at the present time in the
best state of preservation. It also lies higher, the ground sloping both
eastward toward the river bank, which forms the fourth side of the
camp and toward the south. The north embankment, starting from the
river, at a distance of 600 feet, reaches the end of the western
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embankment, which has a length of 1500 feet and, at its southern
extremity, meets another embankment that runs another 700 feet to the
river. The enclosure has no wall on the water side, as the river is a
sufficient protection.
The bank is steep and rises at once 20 to 30 feet. The observations,
or look-out towers, are thirty-six in number. The area of this enclosure
is nearly twenty acres. The thickness of the wall is about fifteen feet,
and its height varies from three to eight feet but has been plowed down
in many places. A large number of mounds are found without the walls,
and residents of the neighborhood say that many within have been
plowed down.
HARD RED BRICKS USED IN GIANT WALL
One curious feature is that the walls are made of a kind of brick. After
building and shaping the walls of clay, they were then burned into brick
by means of wood piled up on each side of the structures.
These bricks are of a red color and are quite hard and of irregular
forms. The soil is still full of brick fragments, many of them of large
size. In the middle of one was a stick one inch thick burned to charcoal.
In nearly all of them were holes where the sedge from the river bank
had been mixed with the clay and the shape of each stalk and blade was
plainly visible. It seemed clear that the soil, a kind of loam, had been
thrown up into a rampart and that the whole was treated with clay,
matted and massed together with bushes and sedge, that all over was
heaped a vast quantity of prairie grass, with perhaps huge trees, and the
whole set on fire. Yet it would not have been necessary to burn trees for
turning clay to brick. That transformation is wrought in Nebraska,
where wood is scarce, with prairie grass alone.
GIANT FOUND SEATED IN STONE BURIAL
VAULT
In the tangled woods near the shore was discovered a mound, which,
though small, gave evidence from its great age for across the center lay
a giant of the forest, prostrated by the elements that for ages it had
defied.
The work in question was conical in shape and very difficult to
excavate. On removing the outer layer, which was composed of black
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vegetable mold, a layer of stones entirely covering the top was found.
Underneath this came a layer of yellowish dirt about six inches in
thickness. In this a finely-finished, grooved stone axe was unearthed.
About a foot below this axe was a large flat stone, which, upon being
removed, disclosed a cavity.
In this cavity was found the skeleton of an adult mound builder,
seated on the floor of clay, baked very hard. Around it were ashes and
fragments of pottery, many of which exhibited great artistic skill in
their various patterns. Several arrow heads, together with a number of
small disks ground from fresh water clam shells, and a number of
perfectly round polished stones, some of which have small grooves
running completely around both ways, thus quartering the spheres were
discovered. The grooves are so slight as to be used only by a small
cord.
STONE AXES AND TEXTILES THAT FELL TO
DUST
One of the large conical mounds on the outside of the fortification was
next opened. After digging through a number of strata of sand, loam,
and small pebbles a solid and compact layer of hard clay was reached.
Underneath this layer was a number of human bones and fragments of
pottery, but no ashes, nor anything to show that any fire had been used.
Near the center of this bone depository were several rollers of textile
fabric, preserved in shape by the moisture of the earth, but in coming in
contact with the air, they were wafted away by the slightest breeze.
Several stone axes, a spearhead, and numerous arrowheads of
various types were unearthed. The excavation was continued for
several feet through a kind of hard, sandy soil, but nothing being of
further interest was discovered.
TWO EFFIGY MOUNDS AT THE UNIVERSITY
OF WISCONSIN AT MADISON
In the north the earthworks took more frequently the form of animals,
the serpent being the favorite design. Ohio and Wisconsin have several
important effigy mounds, and these states have already undertaken the
care of them.
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Two bird-shaped mounds, rising to a height of between two and a
half to three feet above the surface, one forty-three feet long from beak
to tail, the other sixty-six feet over all, have been preserved on the
college campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
A WISCONSIN CEMETERY CONTAINING
ANCIENT GIANTS
Nearly one mile inland from this village the remains of an ancient
cemetery were found. A number of cone-shaped mounds of earth were
scattered promiscuously over an area of several acres. Two of the most
promising then in appearance were next opened. Strata of earth, sand,
and cinders were removed to a depth of over ten feet before any
remains were found.
Underneath the lowest level of cinders a large number of bones were
found, and judging from the different jawbones, at least eight bodies
must have been interred in the mound. The excavation was continued
through alternate layers of clay, sand, and pebbles until a depth of
about ten feet was reached when a large number of bones and pottery
were brought to light. The pottery was highly ornamented.
Antiquities of the Badger State, 1855
At the village of Merton are a number of circular and oblong
elevations and one called “The Cross.” This last is certainly
entitled to the name from its striking resemblance to the cross as
emblematically used and represented by the Roman Church in
every part of the world. And yet there can be no doubt that this
mound was erected long before the first Jesuits visited this country
and presented the emblem of the Christian faith. An excavation has
been made in the mound at the intersection of the arms, and bones
of a very large size have been found.
HUNDREDS OF MOUNDS, EMBALMED NINE-
FOOT GIANT, AND DAMS
_ SYRACUSE DAILY STANDARD, JULY 23, 1897 _
While men were excavating with a steam shovel near Mora Minnesota,
they found an old copper spear with a point measuring 10 inches in
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length and tapering to a very fine and tempered point. The weapon
shows the maker to have been an adept in working copper metal.
Archaeologists believe that at some prehistoric time the country
surrounding Mora was densely inhabited by a race of people who were
much further advanced in civilization than the Indians.
The many mounds around Fish Lake show that a mighty race of
people lies slumbering there, whose history is as yet unwritten—from
the mounds of earth, which were used as sepultures for their dead, and
which demonstrate beyond a doubt that they were a numerous as well
as powerful people.
EVIDENCE OF DAMS
Two investigators excavating a mound found a skeleton apparently
embalmed in a kind of cement, which seemed to be prepared for
embalming the dead. The skeleton appeared to be in a perfect state of
preservation and showed by measurement a height of nine feet for the
individual, who was built in good proportion. As soon as the air struck
it, the bones crumbled and disappeared.
Taking the country northeast from Fish Lake, where there is a group
of 97 mounds, one finds a regular system of dams extending clear to
Lake Superior, 100 miles, in which one can see that prehistoric man
had a regular means of travel by water from their great city around Fish
Lake to Lake Superior, and going south by Snake River to the Gulf of
Mexico.
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6
CITIES IN CIRCLES AND LINES
In the study of ancient human beings, the presence of cities is regarded
as one of the most significant indicators of civilization. This sampling
of stories from around the nation makes it clear that ancient America
was home to significant urban centers, connected by trade. What is
often not understood is that many mound builder centers featured
traditional houses that surrounded the ceremonial mounds and that most
of the major sites had roads, gates, and walls surrounding them. In
addition, evidence of sewage systems and canals has been detected at
various sites across the country. In some cases the towns were also
manufacturing centers and show signs of high trade and commerce of
great sophistication.
THE POVERTY POINT INDUSTRIAL METROPOLIS
Although the Cahokia mound complex near St. Louis is considered the
major mound site on the Mississippi River, the Poverty Point
earthworks in Louisiana is the most ancient temple site and trading
center on the Mississippi River. As the vast extent of this site has been
uncovered, its primacy as the major trading site of ancient America has
gradually gained credence with traditional scholars. Poverty Point is
constructed entirely of earthworks. The core of the site measures
approximately five hundred acres (two square kilometers), although
archaeological investigations have shown that the total occupation area
extended for more than three miles (five kilometers) along the river
terrace. The monumental construction consists of a group of six
concentric, crescent-shaped ridge earthworks, divided by five aisles
radiating from the center at the riverbank. The site also has several
mounds, both on the outside and inside of the ring earthworks. The
name Poverty Point came from the plantation that once surrounded the
site. The United States nominated Poverty Point for inclusion on the
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s
(UNESCO) World Heritage List in January 2013.
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Fig. 6.1. Poverty Point
Most of the artifacts found at Poverty Point are small baked shapes
made of loess. They are usually shaped like balls, bicones, or ropes, all
of which have been described as Poverty Point objects, or PPOs.
Archaeologists have long debated their uses and have concluded that
the fired-earth objects were used in cooking. When placed in earth
ovens, the objects were shown to hold heat. An alternate way of heating
up food before pottery was to stone boil. The soil of the lower
Mississippi Valley at Poverty Point does not contain proper pebbles, so
the manufacture of artificial stones was necessary.
In recent years, the theory that these anomalous clay balls, fire pits,
and other PPOs were used for cooking has come under intense debate,
and more recent discoveries linking this site to the copper-producing
region of the Great Lakes has led some scholars to posit that what was
really going on at Poverty Point was actually the refining of copper for
trade goods, the theory being that raw copper was brought down from
Michigan during the summer months and then refined for manufacture
and trade during the winter in the warmer climate of Louisiana.
LOST CITY IN ONTARIO
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A report from 1871 notes that a lost city was found on a farm in
Dunnville, Ontario, in association with two tons of charcoal and
various implements that indicated the site of an ancient forge.
GIANT SKULLS WITH PERFECT TEETH
DAILY TELEGRAPH, TORONTO, ONTARIO, AUGUST 23, 1871
Dunnville, Ontario: There is not the slightest doubt that the remains of
a lost city are on this farm. At various times within the past years, the
remains of mud houses with their chimneys had been found and there
are dozens of pits of a similar kind to that just unearthed, though much
smaller, in the place which has been discovered before, though the fact
has not been made public hitherto. The remains of a blacksmith’s shop,
containing two tons of charcoal and various implements, were turned
up a few months ago.
The farm, which consists of 150 acres, has been cultivated for nearly
a century and was covered with a thick growth of pine, so that it must
have been ages ago since the remains were deposited there. The skulls
of the skeletons are of an enormous size and all manner of shapes,
about half as large again as are now to be seen. The teeth in most of
them are still in an almost perfect state of preservation, though they
soon fall out when exposed to the air.
It is supposed that there is gold or silver in large quantities to be
found in the premises, as mineral rods have invariably, when tested,
pointed to a certain spot and a few yards from where the last batch of
skeletons was found directly under the apple tree. Some large shells,
supposed to have been used for holding water, which were also found
in the pit, were almost petrified. There is no doubt that if there is a
scheme of exploration carried on thoroughly, the result would be highly
interesting. A good deal of excitement exists in the neighborhood, and
many visitors call at the farm daily.
The skulls and bones of the giants are fast disappearing, being taken
away by curiosity hunters. It is the intention of Mr. Fredinburg to cover
the pit up very soon. The pit is ghastly in the extreme. The farm is
skirted on the north by the Grand River. The pit is close to the banks,
but marks are there to show where the gold or silver treasure is
supposed to be under. From the appearance of the skulls, it would seem
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that their possessors died a violent death, as many of them were broken
and dented.
The axes are shaped like tomahawks, small, but keen, instruments.
The beads are all of stone and of all sizes and shapes. The pipes are not
unlike in shape the cutty pipe, and several of them are engraved with
dogs’ heads. They have not lost their virtue for smoking. Some people
profess to believe that the locality of the Fredinburg farm was formerly
an Indian burial place, but the enormous stature of the skeletons and the
fact that pine trees of centuries growth covered the spot go far to
disprove this idea.
OHIO ESTIMATED TO HAVE TEN THOUSAND
MOUNDS
_ NEW YORK TRIBUNE, 1874 _
The first settlers of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys found various
forms of earthworks in the solitudes of the wilderness overgrown with
dense forests. It is said that Ohio alone has 10,000 of these in the form
of mounds of various sizes, and 1,500 enclosures are scattered through
the state.
They are found in Illinois, Wisconsin, and other Western States, and
in the Gulf States, varying in size. Some are small hillocks two or three
feet high, while others assume almost pyramidal magnitude, like the
mound in Cahokia, Ill., which has a base of more than five acres in area
and a height of ninety feet.
One of the most elaborate of all these works is located in Newark,
Ohio. It is labyrinthine in structure, containing some fifteen miles of
embankment, and after years of investigation archaeologists can do no
more than surmise as to what its uses were.
Clearly it cannot have been built for architectural purposes, for the
enclosures of which it principally consists have the ditches on the
inside of the embankment, while the outside presents no visible
obstacle to an invading army.
100-FOOT GATEWAY
One of the largest of the enclosures is known as “Old Fort” and stands
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one and a half miles southwest of the city of Newark. It consists of a
circular embankment more than a mile in circumference, entirely
unbroken except on the side toward the city, where a mammoth
gateway of a hundred feet [in width] was constructed by the builders.
On each side of this passage, the ends of the embankment projected a
little from the center of the enclosure, and rose to a height of twenty-
five feet, while the general height is about eighteen. Upon this
embankment and within the ditch on the inside, the trees are as large as
those upon the undisturbed portion of the ground around and within the
fort. The citizen still lives in Newark who cut an oak tree upon this
bank sixty years ago which measured 650 rings of annual growth.
PARALLEL MOUNDS LEAD TO OCTAGONAL
CENTRAL SQUARE
From this mammoth gateway, two parallel lines of earth, a few rods
apart, lead to a rectangular enclosure over half a mile to the Northeast,
which has an area of about twenty acres; beyond which, nearer the city,
are still other works, traces of which are obliterated.
From this network near the city, two sets of parallel walls run west
more than two miles, move to another enclosure in the form of an
octagon, containing about fifty acres, to the southwest of which, and
almost adjoining it, is another circle about equal in size to “the Old
Fort.” Both of these are situated on a range of hills.
25-FOOT STONE WATCHTOWER
The ploughshare has performed its work of demolition to some extent
upon the walls upon some of these latter enclosures with the exception
of one point on the circular embankment. This consists of earth and
stone somewhat irregularly built to a height of twenty-five feet, and, as
it lies in the extreme southwest of the whole system of works, it is
thought by some that this was the watchtower or signal station on the
west.
ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF FOREST
GROWTH COVER THE SITE
When, by whom, and for what purpose these mammoth works were
built, are puzzles which have always baffled the skill of archaeologists.
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It is evident they were built long ages ago, for, where the timber has not
been removed by civilized man, as in the case of the “Old Fort,” dense
forests covered the works, which must have required one thousand
years to grow where they now stand. It is not altogether unreasonable to
suppose that generation after generation of forests has grown and
decayed on this soil since it was built by the dusky savages into the
form we now find it.
THE WHEATFIELD MOUND OF PENNSYLVANIA, FIRST
DESCRIBED IN 1806
An ancient mound in West Wheatfield Township, a short distance north
of Robinson, Pennsylvania, was known to the earliest settlers as Fort
Hill. Earlier digs at the Fort Hill site uncovered textiles of a finely
woven nature that did not match those of the local Indians, as well as a
number of carved and hollowed stone instruments whose use was
unknown at the time they were dug up. The earliest published
description is from 1806.
Wheatfield Town History, 1806
In Wheatfield Township there is a remarkable mound from which
several antiques have been dug, consisting of a sort of stone
serpent, five inches in diameter; part of the entablature of a
column, both rudely carved, in form of diamond and leaves; an
earthen urn with ashes, and many others of which we have no
account. It was thought that it was the ruins of an ancient Indian
Temple.
Arm’s history states that the mound described was on the inside
of “Fort Hill” and that there were found at an early date pottery
fragments of much finer texture than that made by the historic
Indians; also stones both large and small, of peculiar shapes,
carved and hollowed.
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Fig. 6.2. Temple mounds enclosed in a circle, illustration from Ancient Monuments
of the Mississippi Valley by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis
CIRCULAR VILLAGES AMID THE TREES
Before the encroachment of modern civilization, the area of western
Pennsylvania leading all the way into Indiana was described as a vast
sea of trees and high grass that was teaming with wild life and ample
plants and herbs for a wide variety of uses. The following description
of a circle mound population of two hundred people was first recounted
in a court in 1731.
An official report from Jonas Davenport and James LeTort to the
Pennsylvania Provisional Council stated that there were three villages
along Conemaugh Creek, composed of approximately forty-five
families, with a population of around two hundred people. Typical of
these kinds of villages, all three were contained within their own
earthen rings. Jonas Davenport and James LeTort, two of the very
earliest Europeans to trade with the Indians in Western Pennsylvania,
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reported in an affidavit before the Pennsylvania Provisional Council,
October 29, 1731, that “on Conemaugh Creek there were three
Shawanese towns” having 45 families and 200 men. Their Chief was
Okowala (also Okowelah or Ocowellos) who was suspected of being a
“favourer of ye French interest.”
In its original wilderness condition at the beginning of historic times,
Western Pennsylvania was covered by a vast sea of trees. Many
travelers wrote of the view from one another of the mountain ridges as
a sea of treetops or the waves of the sea. Here and there were small
natural areas of shrubs and high grass. The area west of Indiana,
according to the earliest pioneers, was one of these and so was a
portion of the southeastern area of Indiana County known as “The
Wheatfields.”
In the northeastern part of the county were huge white pines, 200 feet
or more high along with many hemlocks. In some places the shade of
the tall trees was so dense that sunlight seldom ever penetrated. One
could walk fairly easily through such mighty forests, but the oppressive
silence and the sunless gloom caused many travelers to dread them, and
they wrote of them as “Shades of Death.”
The three ancient towns are thought to have been Conemaugh Old
Town (now Johnstown), Black Legs Town, and Keekenepaulin’s Town
south of the Conemaugh near Loyalhanna Creek.
Davenport and LeTort also mentioned that the Delawares along the
Conemaugh numbered 20 families, and 60 men; their Chiefs being
Captain Hill, or “Alaymacapy” and “Kykenhammo.” Also named as
living in the area was “Sypous, a Dingoe.” There seems to have been an
Indian town north of New Florence. The Robert Hinkson tract of 301
acres was described as “the old town . . . situate on the north side of
Conemaugh opposite Squirrel Hill (the name of the Indian town at New
Florence). The Joseph Culbertson Warrantee Survey (B 23-22)
indicates an ‘Old Indian Town’ north of the Conemaugh.”
184
Fig. 6.3. A carving of an otter. Illustration from Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis
In shape the village was roughly circular consisting of two parallel
stockades, the outer one 450 feet in diameter and the inner 430
feet. This fact was ascertained by the finding of rows of “post
molds,” each mold easily identifiable because of the darker soil in
it as contrasted with the lighter surrounding subsoil. There was a
plaza area in the center of the village. Refuse pits filled with debris
were here and there.
The Indian huts were arranged in a rough circle just within the
stockade, and, as shown by the post molds, were from 18 to 20 feet
in diameter, having a very narrow entrance less than two feet wide.
Inside was a fire pit. Attached to or very near each hut, was a bark-
covered, pear-shaped food storage pit. It is believed that tender
young saplings were placed in each post hole, arched toward the
center, tied at the top, and the whole covered by bark. The staple
food seems to have been maize, probably grown in small plots
outside the village. Other common foods were fish and mussels,
and the meat of animals, particularly deer and elk.
The streams were then clean and sparkling, and fish were
abundant. In the smaller creeks were speckled trout; in the larger
ones yellow and black bass, white perch, buffalo fish, and mullets.
In the rivers were pike, sturgeon, and salmon. Some specimens
were as much as four feet long and 35 pounds. Other animals have
been noted in connection with the archaeological excavations at
the site of the late Prehistoric Indian village near Blairsville.
Other animals known to have been here were gray and black
185
squirrels. The number of panthers is thought to have been rather
few. Even more scarced were the wood buffalos, larger than their
Western kin (nearly a ton in weight), having no hump and being
more nearly black in color, with shorter hair and large hind
quarters. The extensive and lucrative fur trade caused the beaver to
disappear from the local area.
THE GIANTS CLEARED THE FOREST
The claims of the local Indians of Pennsylvania that they did not clear
the wide swaths of forest in the area echo the claims of other Indian
tribes across the United States, who also claim no part in the
construction of the ancient earthworks found in their tribal domains.
The local Indians’ claim that giants were responsible for the clearing of
forestland and construction of huge earthworks is echoed throughout
the United States by widely separated, unrelated Indian tribes.
EXTRA GIANTS: FOUND ON THE NEW YORK-
PENNSYLVANIA STATE LINE
_ PHILADELPHIA TIMES, JUNE 27, 1885 _
’’Why this man was ten or twelve feet high. Thunder and lightning!”
exclaimed Mr. Porter in astonishment. The first speaker, who has won
local distinction as a scientist, reiterated his assertion. J. H. Porter has a
farm near Northeast, not many miles from where the Lake Shore
Railroad crosses the New York state boundary line. Early this week
some workmen in Mr. Porter’s employ came upon the entrance to a
cave and on entering it found heaps of human bones within. Many
skeletons were complete and specimens of the find were brought out
and exhibited to the naturalists and archaeologists of the neighborhood.
They informed the wondering bystanders that the remains were
unmistakably those of giants. The entire village of Northeast was
aroused by the discovery and today hundreds of people from this city
took advantage of their holiday to visit the scene. ... So far about 150
giant skeletons of powerful proportions have been exhumed and
indications point to a second cave eastward, which may probably
contain as many more. Scientists who have exhumed skeletons and
made careful measurements of the bones say that they are the remains
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of a race of gigantic creatures, compared with which our tallest men
would appear pygmies.
History of Crawford County Pennsylvania, 1850
When first visited by the whites, in the valley of French Creek
were old meadows, destitute of trees and covered by long wild
grass and herbage resembling the prairies. By whom these lands
were originally cleared will probably forever remain a matter of
uncertainty. The Indians alleged that the work had not been done
by them. A tradition among them attributed it to a larger and more
powerful race of inhabitants who had pre-occupied the country.
NUMEROUS MOUNDS AND INDIAN RELICS
TO BE FOUND ALONG THE CHEAT RIVER
ABOUT HORSE SHOE BEND IN TUCKER
COUNTY
BU HUGH MAXWELL
RALEIGH HERALD, OCTOBER 4, 1906
The center of the prehistoric Indian settlement, which evidently
contained a large population, was on a prime piece of bottom land on
the Cheat River, in a bend of the stream enclosing one thousand acres
or more. It lies in Tucker County, two miles above the village of St.
George, and has always been known as Horse Shoe Bend. The tract
contained two towns, the sites of which may still be distinguished by
the rank vegetation, which flourishes in a soil made fertile by the
accumulation of bones and other camp life.
The town sites are about a mile apart. The last inhabitant left them as
much as 250 years ago, and perhaps much longer ago, if the evidence
handed from the first settlers is reliable, and there is no occasion to
doubt it.
The lower town site lies opposite Sycamore Island, on the southwest
bank of the Cheat River, a third of a mile below the mouth of Horse
Shoe Run, and about an equal distance from the grave which I opened
last Wednesday, mentioned in a former article. The town site is on the
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farm of Joshua Parsons.
The river is rapidly encroaching on its banks at that place, and has
been doing so for more than 100 years. It has washed away the greater
part of the land that the village stood on and will wash it all away in the
next few years. The soil at that place is 14 feet deep.
A STOREHOUSE OF INDIAN RELICS
This region along the Cheat River, above and below the Horse Shoe, is
a storehouse of Indian archaeology. It is covered with sites of camps
and towns with graves and mounds. Many relics have been picked up in
the past, but few were saved. If all had been preserved they would tell a
tale of the dim past that would astound the people of today.
TWO ACRES OF RECTANGULAR STONES
The site of the principal village on the Cheat River, near this place, had
a particular nature nearly unknown elsewhere in this region.
When Captain James Parsons in 1769 made his homestead on the
river bottom, which is enclosed in the great bend of Cheat River, and is
called the Horse Shoe, he found a plot of ground, rudely quadrilateral
in shape, and covering about two acres, so stony as to be unfit for
cultivation. He therefore left it un-cleared until all of his other hundreds
of acres had been redeemed from the forest.
Fig. 6.4. A carving of an eagle. Illustration from Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis
PARALLEL ROWS OF STONES FOUND
188
When the land became valuable, he cut off the trees and began hauling
away the stone. He then discovered that all of the stones were on the
surface of the ground, while a deep soil lay beneath. What surprised
him more was to find that the stones had been laid in parallel rows, and
so regularly that he was convinced that it was the work of men.
The stones were worn river rocks, carried no doubt, from the stream
which flowed immediately by the spot. The village had been long
deserted, even in 1769, when first seen by white men. That was proved
by the fact that large trees had grown up through the stone pavement,
pushing the rocks aside with their trunks. There were sycamore trees
six feet in diameter, and walnuts and oaks nearly as large. Their ages
could not have been less than 300 and may have been 500 years. It is
not probable that the trees would grow there while the Indians occupied
the place. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to presume that we have
here the remains of a town antedating the discovery of America by
Columbus.
GIANT TOWN
The first recorded settlement on that river bottom [Cheat River] was
made in 1769, and there was built the fort in which the settlers found
shelter during the Denmore War of 1774. The old settlers called the
place where the Indian village stood “The Giant Town.” This was not
because the town was larger, but from the fact that the skeleton of a
very large man was unearthed at that place about 180 years ago. The
fact is as well authenticated as any event can be that depends to some
extent on tradition.
In the year 1774, or about that time, James Parsons was walking
along the river bank at that place (the Cheat River) and discovered the
bones protruding from a bank where a recent flood had washed away
the soil. He pulled out the thigh bones of a man, and adjusting the
bones to his own leg for comparison he found that the bone was seven
inches longer than his own. He was six feet tall.
He pulled out other bones until he had the greater part of a skeleton
from the knees upward. . . . The lower jaw bone fitted over the outside
of his face. He made a partial reconstruction of the skeleton and was
sure the man when alive was eight feet tall.
189
TRADITIONS OF GIANTS
Traditions of giants should be accepted with about the same caution as
we accept the measurements of Goliath, who was said to be 11 feet tall.
There is no special reason to dispute the truth of Captain James
Parsons’ statement concerning the bones. He was a man well known in
his day, and was reliable. He was frequently spoken of in the frontier
histories.
PLEA TO SAVE THE MOUNDS
On the occasion of my present visit I was disappointed and disgusted to
find that the owner of the land had attacked it with a plow and scraper,
and had leveled it (the mound). He wanted the space for agricultural
purposes. A few sheaves of oats were worth more to him than a mound
dating back to a prehistoric people. Such is the sentiment that one all
too often finds.
The past has no value in comparison with a crop of oats or a bushel
of corn. Such people would break up the ruins of Baalbek for material
to macadamize a road.
The utter want of appreciation of things that cannot be eaten, worn,
or sold, was illustrated in the case of a large earthen mound on the
second terrace above both of the village sites, and nearly between them.
I had expected to ask the permission of the owner of the land to open it;
but I heard it had been opened some months ago. When I asked what
was found in it, the answer was: “Not a cent; only some trash.”
The people who dug it open expected to find money in it, and failing
to find that, they saw no earthly value in the “trash” that was turned up
by the shovels. Yet who knows what may have been the bits of weapon
wampum, or of stone, bone, or copper jewelry, which would have
thrown light on the history and habits of the people who lived and died
here at a time of which no syllable has been recorded.
In 1893, the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian
reported finding a very ancient Indian village near Poplar Bluff,
Missouri. According to the article below, over one hundred skeletons
were recovered, including those of a chief who measured seven feet,
eight inches tall.
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MISSOURI MOUNDS ARE A GOLDMINE
ASSOCIATED PRESS, OCTOBER 5, 1964
The farm, long known to be an archaeological gold mine, is identified
in archaeological circles as “Koehler’s Fort.” Diggings were made in
1893, by the Bureau of American Ethnology (of the Smithsonian).
Findings established that the Koehler farm was the site of a village
populated by 500 Indians of the Middle Mississippian culture. These
aborigines pre-dated the tribal American Indian.
THEY LIVED IN HOUSES
They lived in daub and wattle houses under a system of organized
government. Identified with the mound builders of Cahokia, Illinois,
whose culture extends as far southeast as Georgia, their culture was a
peak in civilization.
HOW THE PREHISTORIC RESIDENTS OF
IOWA LIVED
_ IOWA CITY PRESS CITIZEN, JANUARY 13, 1939 _
Professor Charles R. Keyes of Cornell and director of the Iowa
Archaeological Survey, in association with the WPA: “The prehistoric
residents of the Miles County (Iowa) district, lived in groups of perhaps
35 in houses averaging 30 feet square. Excavation of about 12 houses
in the vicinity revealed large holes in the floor, evidently used as
storage or refuse pits,” Keyes explained, “while smaller cavities
remained where posts supporting the roof had originally been situated.”
SKELETON AND HOUSE FOUND AMONG THE SOYBEANS
Fields of lush soybeans and mature cotton now grow on the Walter
Koehler farm near Naylor, Missouri, where an Indian village was a
ceremonial center for primitive tribes nearly one thousand years ago.
EVIDENCE OF AN ANCIENT HOUSE
ASSOCIATED PRESS, OCTOBER 5, 1964
191
Poplar Bluff: The skeleton of a woman found with a pottery water
bottle gives testimony to the archaeological treasure only inches
beneath the soil on the Butler County farm. Jim Price, a sophomore
student of archaeology at the University of Missouri, made the find
September 5th. The skeleton is that of a woman 35 to 40 years old and
dates back to AD 800 to AD 1000. The burial pottery is made of clay
and ground river mussel from the Little Black and Black Rivers.
Also discovered by Price, who holds the title of director of the
archaeological survey of Missouri for the Missouri Archaeological
Survey, was evidence of a house 15 by 20 feet. To the trained eye, the
charcoal-streaked soil told that the house had been burned. The place
where posts once set in a trench was evident and a broken pot lay on
what was once the floor of the house, some three feet from the skeleton.
100 SKELETONS DUG UP—AVERAGED FIVE
FEET, SIX INCHES; TALLEST SEVEN FEET,
EIGHT INCHES
Koehler has also dug up an estimated 100 skeletons in the shallow
graves scattered over his fields. He has been interested chiefly in noting
the height of the remains, which he says averaged 5 feet 6 inches. One
skeleton measured 7 feet 8 inches.
TEMPLE TO THE SUN
These Indians worshipped the sun as evidenced by the large temple
mound clearly visible in the Koehler soybean field. The temple mound
is 75 feet in diameter and has been 30 feet high in Koehler’s memory.
Three other ancillary mounds, located west of the temple mound,
contained houses for the priests. Outlying these mounds was the village
area, which includes the Koehlers’ chicken yard, where the skeleton
was discovered. The site for the village was probably selected for its
nearness to water and its high ground.
AN UNUSUAL SQUARE MOUND IS DESCRIBED
On the Big Harpeth River at Dog Creek in Tennessee, a major square-
bottomed mound has been described in relation to a much larger
complex. The mound is forty-seven feet by forty-seven feet at the base,
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with a height of twenty-five feet. Two other square-bottomed mounds
were also noted in the complex, which are from five to ten feet in
height. In all, there are thirteen mounds in this complex.
The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, 1823
By Dr. John Haywood
On the Big Harpeth river, in a bend of the river below the road,
which crosses near the mouth of Dog creek, from Nashville to
Charlotte, is a square mound, 47 by 47 at the base, twenty-five feet
high, and two others in a row with it, of inferior size, from 5 to 10
feet high. At some distance from them and near to the eastern
extremity of the bend, are three others in a parallel row, with a
space like a public square between the rows.
Near these mounds are other small ones, to the amount of 13 in
all. All around the bend except at the place of entrance is a wall on
the margin of the river. The mounds are upon the area enclosed by
the wall. Within them also and not far from the entrance is a
reservoir of water. Its mouth is square, and it is 15 feet over. The
water in it is nearly even with the surface.
There are besides the entrance, two gateways; from thence to the
river is the distance of 40 yards. The wall is upon the second bank.
On the top of the large mound an image was found some years ago,
eighteen inches long from the feet to the head. Soapstone was the
material of which it was composed. The arms were slipped into the
socket and there retained with hooks. They hung downwards when
not lifted up. The trees standing upon the mounds were very old. A
poplar stood on one of them, 5 or 6 feet through. A large road leads
through the entrance, which is at the point where the river turns off
to make the bend, and after making it, returns to an opposite point
near it.
Into the river at this latter point runs a branch from near the first
mentioned point and the branch is wide enough for a road; and
from this point to the branches, is a deep gulley, which is filled up
as wide as the road, until made level with the adjoining land on the
other side. Over this filled-up interval, passes a road from the great
mound between the point where is a high bluff, and the branch in a
southwardly direction. It is at this time two or three feet deep and
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six or seven wide. It crosses the river in less than half a mile.
On the north side of the bend and wall is a gateway and also on
the south. On parts of this wall, at the distance of about 40 yards
apart, are projected banks like redoubts on which persons might
have stood.
THE ANCIENT ROADS LINE UP WITH THE GATEWAYS
Attesting to the primacy of this particular mound complex in ancient
history is the fact that the two roads discovered leading to the site pass
through the two main gates built into one of the walls and then pass
into the main square complex. In addition, numerous walls enclose the
mound complex and also line parts of the road leading to the complex.
On the east side of the first large mound, is a way to ascend it,
wide enough for two men to walk abreast, and sloping to the top.
Steps were no doubt once there, though not now visible. From the
gateway on the south side of the bend and wall are the traces of
two old roads, one leading to the other works within a mile of
these, in another end of the creek, and over an intervening bottom
of rich land, made by the winding of the river between the two
bends and, in fact, forming a middle or intermediate bend on the
opposite side; so that there are three bends, the two outer and the
middle.
The other road leading to the mouth of Dog creek and traceable
for several miles beyond it; the first of these roads passes from the
gateway into the public square, between the mounds to the other
gateway on the north side.
Higher up the river, and within a mile of the above-described
enclosures, and above the road leading by the mouth of Dog creek
to Charlotte, is another bend of the river, so formed as to leave a
bend from on the north or opposite side of the river, and between
the two bends on the south side. In the other bend on the south,
above the road, is a square wall, abutting on the south side above
the river, on a high bluff of the river, upon the bank of which a
wall is also built, as it is on the three other sides.
On the outside of it is a ditch, five or six feet wide, with large
trees on it. In the eastern wall are two gateways. About the center
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of this enclosure is a mound of the same dimensions as was the
large mound in the other enclosure.
On the east, north, and south sides of it is a raised platform, 10 or
12 feet high on the east side, but less as the hill ascends on the
north and south. The top is level; from it to the top of the mound
itself, is 10 or 12 feet or more. The top of this mound was ascended
to from the west, where the height is a lot more than 5 or 6 feet.
The platform is 60 feet over. Two large gateways are in the
eastern wall. From the most southwardly of them, a road leads to
the river and across it in a northwardly direction, near the mouth of
Dog creek. And from the most northwardly gateway, a road leads
to the river and across it, in a northwardly direction, or a little east
of north. It then passes over the intermediate bend, or bottom, on
the east side of the river and into the enclosures first described.
The bottom on which the second enclosures stand, and also the
bottom on the opposite side of the river below this, and that on
which stand the enclosures first described, is full of pine knots,
which are ploughed up daily. There are no piney woods nearer to
these bottoms than 5 or 6 miles. These knots are the most abundant
in the intermediate bottom, and but few in the first described
enclosures. Mr. Spears supposes, that these are the remains of old
field pines, grown to full size after the desertion of cultivation, and
the total exhaustion of the lands by long continued tillage. That
after allowing their full growth, and after the soil had been restored
by long rest, the pines fell down and were succeeded by the growth
we now see standing up on the bottom; large oaks, poplars, and
sugar trees. One large sugar tree stands there with its roots
shooting through the upper part of a large decayed pine stump.
SUN-DRIED BRICK USED IN MISSISSIPPI
NATIONAL SUNDAY NEWS, SUPPLEMENT, 1905
These ancient remains are probably more numerous in the state of
Mississippi, though perhaps smaller, than anywhere else. But here, in
some cases, sun-dried brick was used in the embankments and there is a
mound sixty feet long, 400 feet wide, and forty feet high.
195
THE CADDO
When the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto led an expedition
into what is now the southeastern United States in the 1540s, he
encountered a Native American group known as the Caddo. Composed
of many tribes, the Caddo were organized into three confederacies, the
Hasinai, Kadohadacho, and Natchitoches, which were all linked by
similar languages.
At the time of de Soto’s visit, the Caddo controlled a large territory.
It included what is now eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas,
northeastern Texas, and northwestern Louisiana. Archaeologists have
thought that the Caddo and related peoples had been living in the
region for centuries and that they had their own local variant of
Mississippian culture.
Recent excavations have revealed within that region more cultural
diversity than scholars had expected. The sites along the Arkansas
River, in particular, seem to have their own distinctive characteristics.
Scholars still classify the Mississippian sites found in the entire Caddo
area, including Spiro Mound, as Caddoan Mississipian.
Fig. 6.5. Location of the Caddoan Mississippian culture
196
CADDO MOUNDS IN ARKANSAS TOURIST
ATTRACTION
ARKANSAS TIMES, AUGUST 17, 1975
In 1964, Glen L. Kizzia discovered the site of a Caddo Indian village
and burial ground near Murfreesboro: a site that he has given the name
Ancient Burial Grounds. The village that Kizzia has unearthed covers
about 30 acres in an area where the Little Missouri River once flowed.
Located one-and-a-half miles west of Murfreesboro off Arkansas
Highway 27, the Indian burials have become popular with tourists who
visit the city in search of diamonds at the nearby Crater of Diamonds
State Park and in pursuit of outdoor recreation on the cool waters of
Lake Greeson.
Early European explorers, who visited the land that was to become
Arkansas, reported the Caddo to be an advanced civilization. These
Indians were expert in many things, including tanning hides, making
pottery, and farming. Kizzia believes that early Caddo pottery is among
the finest Indian pottery he has encountered.
An example of a “Temple Mound” is to be found at the Ancient
Burial Grounds. The mound has not been excavated, except to show a
good cross-section of the various stages that have occurred. The most
unusual burial at the site is one, which Kizzia believes to be the largest
Caddoan burial on record, probably at least 800 years old. This is a
circular burial, measuring two feet deep, by some 15 feet in diameter.
197
Fig. 6.6. For a thousand years Caddo women made the finest pottery east of the
Rockies.
A GIANT RACE: THE INDIAN MOUND
CHICKASAWBA
HUMAN SKELETONS EIGHT AND TEN FEET IN
HEIGHT—RELICS OF A FORMER RACE.
_ EVENING TELEGRAPH, SEPTEMBER 15, 1870 _
Two miles west of Barfield Point, in Arkansas County, Ark., on the
east bank of the lovely stream called Pemiscot river, stands an Indian
mound, some twenty-five feet high and about an acre in area at the top.
. . . The mound derives its name from Chickasawba, a chief of the
Shawnee tribe, who lived, died, and was buried there. This chief was
one of the last race of hunters who lived in that beautiful region and
who once peopled it quite thickly . . .
Aunt Kitty Williams, who now resides there, relates that
Chickasawba would frequently bring in for sale as much as twenty
gallons of pure honey in deerskins bags slung to his back. He was
always a friend to the whites, a man of gigantic stature and herculean
strength. ... He was buried at the foot of the mound on which he had
lived, by his tribe, most of whom departed for the Nation immediately
after performing his funeral rites. .. .
Chickasawba was perfectly honest and the best informed chief of his
tribe. ... A number of years ago, making an excavation into or near the
foot of Chickasawba’s mound, a portion of a GIGANTIC HUMAN
SKELETON was found. The men who were digging, becoming
interested, unearthed the entire skeleton and from measurements given
us by reliable parties the frame of the man to whom it belonged could
not have been less than eight or nine feet in height. Under the skull,
which slipped easily over the head of our informant (who, we will here
state, is one of our best citizens), was found a peculiarly shaped earthen
jar, resembling nothing in the way of Indian pottery, which has before
been seen by them. It was exactly the shape of the round-bodied, long
necked carafes or water-decanters, a specimen of which may be seen on
Gaston’s dining table.
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The material of which the vase was made was a peculiar kind of clay
and the workmanship was very fine. The belly or body of it was
ornamented with figures or hieroglyphs consisting of a correct
delineation of human hands, parallel to each other, open, palms
outward, and running up and down the vase, the wrists to the base and
the fingers toward the neck. . . . Since that time, wherever an
excavation has been made in the Chickasawba county in the
neighborhood of the mound SIMILAR SKELETONS have been found
and under the skull of every one were found similar funeral vases,
almost exactly like the one described. There are now in this city several
of the vases and portions of the huge skeletons.
One of the editors of the Appeal yesterday measured a thigh bone,
which is fully three feet long. The thigh and shin bones, together with
the bones of the foot, stood up in a proper position in a physician’s
office in this city, measured five feet in height and show the body to
which the leg belonged to have been from nine to ten feet in height. At
Beaufort’s Landing, near Barfield, in digging a deep ditch, a skeleton
was dug up: the leg of which measured between five and six feet in
length, and other bones in proportion. In a very few days we hope to be
able to lay before our readers accurate measurement and descriptions of
the portions of skeletons now in the city and of the artifacts found in
the graves. It is not a matter of doubt that these are HUMAN
REMAINS, but of a long extinct race.
199
Fig. 6.7. Illustration of a Haley complicated-incised jar excavated in 1911 by
Clarence B. Moore from a grave at the Haley Place, Miller County, Arkansas.
(The drawing and watercolor painting was one of the featured color plates in
Moore’s 1912 report, Some Aboriginal Sites on Red River.)
The following article on archaeological finds made in Oklahoma while
digging for a new dam opens with an unexpectedly apologetic headline.
DAM DESTROYS EVIDENCE FOR CITY OF
100,000
RAY E. COLTON, SCIENCE WRITER
DAILY NEWS-RECORD, MIAMI, OKLAHOMA, DECEMBER 4,
1939
While construction of the Grand River Dam in Mayes County will be
200
of vast value to the residents of this area and others, it has already
proven a “boon” to archaeological research insofar as finds made in the
form of skeleton remains of pre-historic man during excavation work
are concerned. During the last week two large burials have been
unearthed, one of which contained several dozen decapitated skulls,
showing that the early day races of eastern Oklahoma tribes did away
with their enemies in a unique manner.
Fig. 6.8. The Great Mortuary: effigy of a man smoking a pipe made of Missouri
flint clay (courtesy of Herb Roe).
201
Fig. 6.9. Engraved whelk shell cup with raptor head (courtesy of Herb Roe)
Fig. 6.10. Craig Mound—also called the Spiro Mound—is the second-largest
mound on the site and the only burial mound. It is located about 1,500 feet (460
meters) southeast of the plaza (courtesy of Herb Roe).
A cavity created within the mound, about 10 feet (3 m) high and 15
feet (4.6 m) wide, allowed for almost perfect preservation of fragile
artifacts made of wood, conch shell, and copper. The conditions in this
hollow space were so favorable that objects made of perishable
materials such as basketry, woven fabric of vegetal and animal fibers,
lace, fur, and feathers were preserved inside it. Such objects have
202
traditionally been created by women in historic tribes. Also found
inside were several examples of Mississippian stone statuary made
from Missouri flint clay and Mill Creek chert bifaces, all thought to
have originally come from the Cahokia site in Illinois.
Fig. 6.11. Copper ear spool (courtesy of Herb Roe)
A DOZEN "ODD" SKULLS: SEVERAL DOZEN
SKELETONS
Centuries before the arrival of white pioneers in what is today the
geographical confines of Ottawa, Mayes, and adjoining counties, a
strange race, now known to archaeologists as the mound builders, came
to establish their governmental seats here.
This was definitely established only a few days ago in the discovery
by workmen excavating for the Grand River Dam, near Langley in
Mayes County, of two large burials containing several dozen skeletons
203
and a dozen “odd” skulls, ranging from children to adults. An
examination of these remains, which appear to be in a fairly excellent
state of preservation, by anthropologists from the University of
Oklahoma, who are now on the scene, shows that the skeleton remains
are unmistakably those of a race of people known as the mound
builders.
MOUND BUILDER CAPITAL
The remains of mounds, such as effigy, burial, ceremonial, fortification
etc., which have been found throughout northern Mayes and eastern
Ottawa counties, and which appear to centralize in this area around
Langley, near the Grand River Dam site, give ample proof that this
section of eastern Oklahoma evidently was the capital of this vanished
race. . ..
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
Large quantities of arrow-heads, ranging in size from the slender fish-
point types, used to hunt small game such as birds, up to the large war-
points, ranging up to 10 inches in length have been found during
excavation work on the dam. These, together with quantities of pottery
and potsherds (potions of pottery) of many designs, which have been
found, have given scientists and laymen something to think about as
regards the races that inhabited this part of eastern Oklahoma, centuries
before the arrival of the white man.
ARCHAEOLOGISTS SHOW PROOF FOR CITY
OF 100,000
Tracing the area as it one-time appeared, and basing theories on the
tremendous amount of artifacts found by workmen during digging
operations, it is established by anthropologists and archaeologists who
are now on the scene, that the “city,” if that is what it might have been
called, had an area of about 10 square miles, and no doubt supported an
estimated population of over 100,000 people.
SEVENTY-FIVE COMPLETE SKELETONS
The remains of this vanished race consist of about 75 complete
skeletons. Two distinct burials were unearthed, one containing dozens
204
of decapitated bodies, while the other contained an equal amount of
complete skeletons, which do not appear to have been mutilated.
The skeleton remains do not crumble when exposed to outside air,
and appear to have been buried over one thousand years, or more. An
estimate of 1,500 years has been given by those who are excavating the
remains, part of which will be transferred to the University of
Oklahoma at Norman for study and classification.
HEADLESS BURIALS BAFFLE
ANTHROPOLOGISTS
This find baffles archaeologists and anthropologists from the
University of Oklahoma somewhat, yet it is believed that the mound
containing the headless burials is a sacrificial mound, where enemies
were buried after their capture during warfare.
The second burial is that of an ordinary burial mound, such as was
unearthed near Grove in Delaware County two years ago. Both burials
are unmistakably those of mound-builder origin, and are certainly not
of Indian origin.
CLIFF DWELLERS
Although the cliff dwellers are generally thought of as a recent tribe,
Smithsonian field reports from 1910 on a Puye cliff-dweller excavation
describe signs of construction dating back at least five thousand years
at some of the kivas that they explored. In a report, Smithsonian
correspondent M. J. Brown writes, “It is estimated by the Smithsonian
people that 10,000 lived on the face of this one cliff, and that the
population of the adjoining cliffs and on the mesas was fully 100,000
people.” Brown also comments on the great quantities of Portland
cement that were plastered in almost every one of the hundreds of
rooms in the settlement.
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
Most wonderful of all is the stairway that leads to the top of the cliffs.
Here one gets some idea of the ages that these people lived in this spot
and the multitude who used this path, for human feet have worn the
solid rock to a depth of twelve inches, and when you consider that this
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outside rock is not of the soft composition of the caves, then you have
some conception of the age and the density of the population.
To give a further idea of just how distorted our view of the extent
and size of the cliff dweller population is, here is a report from the
Oakland Tribune of 1926 about the discovery of a six-mile-long city in
Nevada.
ARIZONA GIANTS
EL PASO HERALD, APRIL 19, 1915
“The skeleton of a giant fully eight feet tall has been found near Silver
City,” said H. E. Davis. The thigh bone of this ancient inhabitant of the
southwest measures two inches more than the ordinary man and must
have been a giant of great strength. The jaw bone is large enough to fit
over the jaw of an ordinary man. A peculiarity of the forehead is that it
recedes from the eyes like that of an ape. The similarity is still further
found in the sharp bones under the eyes. The skeleton was found
encased in baked mud, indicating that encasing the corpse in mud and
baking it was the mode of embalming. Near the skeleton was found a
stone weighing 12 pounds, which, judging from its shape, must have
been a club. The wooden handle has rotted away but there are marks on
the stone that indicate that it had been bound to a wooden handle with
tongs. It is rather peculiar that less than 30 miles from where this
skeleton was found and located on the Gile river are the former houses
of a tribe of small cliff dwellers. The existence of these two races so
near together forms an interesting topic. “These ‘gorillalike’ or
‘monkey-like’ skulls have been reported in many states several times
by Smithsonian personnel. Professor Thomas Wilson, the curator of
Prehistoric Anthropology for the Smithsonian, said the following about
the find of an eight-foot-one-inch giant skeleton in Miamisburg, Ohio,
in 1897. “The authenticity of the skull is beyond doubt. Its antiquity is
unquestionably great. To my own personal knowledge several such
crania were discovered in the Hopewell group of mounds in Ohio,
exhibiting monkey-like traits.”
IN NEVADA, A SIX-MILE-LONG STRAIGHT
CITY
206
OAKLAND TRIBUNE, JANUARY 3, 1926
Out in Nevada Governor James Graves Scrugham and archaeologist M.
C. Harrington announced the discovery of Pueblo cities that pre-date
the birth of Christ. The discoveries gained national attention a year ago
when Harrington first told of the finds.
“The ruins,” Harrington said, “run in a continuous line of six miles
and are about a half mile wide. The outlines of the houses of stone and
adobe and the stone pavement are clearly seen.” Everywhere were
myriads of pieces of broken pottery. Later Harrington found evidence
convincing him that the city had existed 2000 years and was occupied
for at least 1000 years. Then followed discoveries of tombs decorated
with turquoises and pearl shells cut into small beads. “These ancient
Nevadans,” said Mr. Harrington, “probably were the ancestors of our
modern Pueblo tribes.. ..”
ANCIENT HIEROGLYPHS FOUND
In New Mexico and Arizona have been found communal dwellings
from three to five stories high, in which may have lived as many as
1200 Indians. They are believed to be between 2000 and 5000 years
old. Wide interest was aroused among scientists by the reports that
certain hieroglyphs found on the walls resemble those of the Chinese.
NO TRADITION OF CLIFF DWEFLERS
BY M. J. BROWN
FIELD REPORT ON THE SMITHSONIAN’S 1910 PUYE CLIFF
DWELLER EXCAVATION
“The Pueblos have no traditions, legends, or anything regarding
these cliff people. ”
Smithsonian
REPRESENTATIVE, 1910
It is estimated by the Smithsonian people that 10,000 people lived on
the face of this one cliff, and that the population of the adjoining cliffs
and on the mesas was fully 100,000 people.
207
SMITHSONIAN EXCAVATES 250 SKELETONS
OF THE CLIFF DWELLERS
And just beyond this ruin is a burial ground where during the past
summer, the Smithsonian people excavated 250 skeletons and all kinds
of trinkets and pottery buried with them. The graveyard is but partially
excavated and hundreds of other skeletons yet sleep there. From one of
the caves in the cliff, Mr. Hoag showed me some leg bones.
EXPLORING THE KIVA
About in the center of this long cliff is a stone stairway with a kiva at
the foot. And I must tell you of the kiva before we go up. The best
description of it would be of a well perhaps ten feet across and twenty
feet deep.
The roof has long since washed away, and the hole is partially filled
up, but the Smithsonian people have excavated it and placed therein a
ladder. We descended and there found the only fireplace, or rather the
ruins of one, that is to be found in the whole city. The floor is cement,
and in front of the fireplace are two rows of holes in the floor, six on a
side, and the walls are full of niches, each seeming to conform with
similar places on the opposite side.
This kiva is supposed to have been the secret room where the
religious and ceremonial rites of these strange people were performed
and a room where but few of the cliff dwellers feet ever trod.
THE PORTLAND CEMENT PUZZLE
Where the great quantities of cement came from that plastered almost
every room of these hundreds is another for the puzzle department to
go to. Nothing has ever been found here of the sticky nature, yet these
aborigines must have had a Portland source from somewhere, for it was
used in abundance.
In but one room of the hundreds, is there any color. But in one we
found the interior painted red, faded through the many generations, but
plainly, red, and the picture of some unintelligible man or animal over
this door and had first been carved and then painted.
We climbed the cliff, putting our patent leathers in the deep, worn
footpath, and our gloved hands in the hand-holds, and gained the top.
208
What a sight!
There in the bright sunshine lay the ruins of a great communal
dwelling, one building that once sheltered 1,200 people, a human
beehive of the days before history. Ages ago this house fell into ruins,
but it has been carefully excavated and cleared away, and the first story
and its walls now stand as they did when built.
The great building reminds one of our modern stockyards—an
enclosure cut up into little rooms—each room about five by ten feet—
and each communicating with the other by a door about three feet high
by eighteen inches wide—just one great beehive with no outdoor
entrances.
From the quantity of ruins it is pretty thoroughly established that this
building was at least three stories high, one great enclosure around a
court, and with one main entrance, or street, which is clearly defined. In
the center, or court, there are many handsome stone relics, grinding
stones, skinning stones, pieces of pottery, and many whose use we can
only guess at, but plainly fashioned for some purpose.
CARVING OF A HEART IS FOUND
Over the doors of many of the homes on the cliff’s face, are rock
pictures—whose meaning I would give much to read—and of some I
am sure there are meanings. The sun symbol is prominent, and they
were in no doubt sun worshippers, while there are many crude
drawings representing men, beasts, and birds. One carving particularly
interested me, as representing a heart.
ANCIENT CLIFF DWELLERS HAD
DIFFERENT SKULLS THAN THE INDIANS
“There is too great a difference in the heads of the Cliff Dwellers
skeletons and the present Indians to allow any connection or
relationship,” stated Hewitt of the Smithsonian expedition. “The
Pueblos have no traditions, legends, or anything regarding these cliff
people. Old mountaineers will tell you that a plague exterminated them;
others that volcanic fumes stifled them at one stifle; and so on, but as
stated, there is absolutely nothing to bear out any change, but that of a
slow order of extermination.”
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NEW MEXICO DISCOVERY: 12-FOOT GIANT
FOUND
NEW YORK TIMES, FEBRUARY 11, 1902
Owing to the discovery of the remains of a race of giants in Guadalupe,
New Mexico, antiquarians and archaeologists are preparing an
expedition further to explore that region. This determination is based on
the excitement that exists among the people of a scope of country near
Mesa Rica, about 200 miles southeast of Las Vegas, where an old
burial ground has been discovered that has yielded skeletons of
enormous size. Luciana Quintana, on whose ranch the ancient burial
plot is located, discovered two stones that bore curious inscriptions and
beneath these were found in shallow excavations the bones of a frame
that could not have been less than 12 feet in length. The men who
opened the grave say the forearm was 4 feet long and that in a well-
preserved jaw the lower teeth ranged from the size of a hickory nut to
that of the largest walnut in size. The chest of the being is reported as
having a circumference of seven feet. Quintana, who has uncovered
many other burial places, expresses the opinion that perhaps thousands
of skeletons of a race of giants long extinct, will be found. This
supposition is based on the traditions handed down from the early
Spanish invasion that have detailed knowledge of the existence of a
race of giants that inhabited the plains of what now is Eastern New
Mexico. Indian legends and carvings also in the same section indicate
the existence of such a race.
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7
A COPPER KINGDOM AND MICA MINES
ISLE ROYALE—THE ROYAL COPPER MOUND
CONNECTION
Located in Lake Superior off the northern tip of the Keweenaw
Peninsula in northern Michigan, Isle Royale, also known as Royal
Island, is one of the most interesting ancient sites in America. Not only
is the island literally made out of the highest-grade copper in the entire
world, but its name also suggests its royal status in the minds of the
ancient giants of the North American copper kingdom. Significantly, a
quick look at a modern map of the United States quite clearly shows
that the northern border of America was drawn to include this island,
showing, again quite clearly, that someone knew of the extreme
importance of this innocuous little island.
Because of a freak volcanic event that twisted the copper-bearing
bedrock above the water line, thus allowing all the sulfur impurities to
burn away in the open air, the copper at Isle Royale is the purest found
anywhere in the world. The entire region is scarred by ancient mine pits
and trenches up to twenty feet deep. Carbon-dating testing of wood
remains found in sockets of copper artifacts indicates that some are at
least 5,700 years old, while other open digs around the area have been
dated from eight to ten thousand years old.
The most conservative estimates calculate that during a ten-
thousand-year period, over five hundred thousand tons of copper were
taken from the mines. At the other end of the spectrum, in Prehistoric
Copper Mining in the Lake Superior Region, published in 1961, Roy
Ward Drier and Octave Joseph DuTemple estimated that over 1.5
billion pounds of copper had been mined from the region. Since
traditional researchers refuse to analyze European copper for its
probable Michigan signature, no one has been able to account for
where all this copper went. That it was traded and used extensively
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across the United States by the mound builders there is no question, but
this in no way can account for the magnitude of copper taken out of
these unique mines.
Fig. 7.1. Ontonagon boulder of native copper as depicted in Henry Rowe
Schoolcraft’s 1821 book Narrative Journal of Travels through the Northwestern
Regions of the United States. Note the relative size of the boulder on the right
riverbank versus the men in the canoes. The Ontonagon boulder is actually just
three feet, eight inches in its largest dimension and weighs 3,708 pounds. It was
initially exhibited in Detroit in 1843 and was eventually acquired by the
Smithsonian Institution.
What researchers have determined is a continuous history of mining
activity that began in 8000 BCE and then abruptly ended around 1500
BCE, contemporaneous with the volcanic explosion on the Cretan
island of Thera (now known as Santorini). Since rock-cut pictures of
Cretan trading vessels have been found in the Isle Royale area, this
lends credence to the Cretan connection in North America at a very
early date. In addition, researchers have also determined that copper
mining activity resumed again around 900 CE. This date corresponds
perfectly with related evidence of a Viking presence in the area around
that same date.
SURFACE EXPLORING COPPER MINERS
In 1863, the Smithsonian published this field report based on Col.
Charles Whittlesey’s explorations of the copper mines discovered along
the Eagle River in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Although the report is
mostly observational, it does hint at the magnitude of these mining
operations.
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ANCIENT COPPER MINING IN THE GREAT
LAKES
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, APRIL 1863
Another authority. Colonel Charles Whittlesey, a Civil War veteran and
American professional geologist for the government, wrote in 1856 a
treatise entitled, “Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior,”
based on what he had seen at Eagle River in the Keweenaw copper
area. In 1862, Col. Charles Whittlesey drew a map of the position of
the ancient copper mine pits for the Smithsonian, and it forms a
valuable part of his document on the prehistoric copper miners.
After completing his inspection of the ancient copper mines in the
Upper Peninsula on the shores of Lake Superior, Col. Whittlesey
reasoned somewhat as follows: an ancient people, of whom history
gives no account, extracted copper from the rocks on the Keweenaw
Peninsula. They did it in a crude way by means of fire and the use of
copper wedges or gads and stone mauls. They had only the simplest
mechanical contrivances and penetrated the earth but a short distance.
They do not appear to have had any skill with metallurgy or of breaking
up large masses of copper. For cutting tools they had chisels and
probably axes of pure copper hardened only by beating when cold.
They sought chiefly for small masses and lumps of metal and not for
large pieces. No sepulture mounds, defenses, domiciles, roads, or
canals are known to have been made by them.
No evidence remains for their cultivation of the soil. They made
weapons of defense or of the chase such as darts, spears, and daggers of
copper. These Old Copper Indians must have been numerous,
industrious, and persevering. The amount of work done indicates that
they mined the country a long time or the equivalent of 10,000 men
over a period of 1,000 years. Col. Charles Whittlesey discovered that
the principal prehistoric copper mines in the Keweenaw-Ontonagon
area of the Upper Peninsula corresponded to the mining locations of the
1850s. In both the prehistoric and the modern mines three groups of
operations appear, one a little below the forks of the Ontonagon River,
another at Portage Lake, and the third on the banks of the Eagle River.
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These last two sites were located on the Keweenaw Peninsula. It was
evident to Whittlesey that centuries ago the old copper miners were
only surface explorers, and while the principal mines of the new era
followed in the same pattern of location as the ancient, the latter-day
miners were able with much better equipment to penetrate the earth to
far greater depths.
KNOWLEDGE OF ANNEALING AND EMBOSSING
The ancient North American coppersmiths were the best in the ancient
world, as evidenced by the antiquity, quality, and scientific uniqueness
of their work. Not only did they know how to anneal, emboss, and
engrave copper, but they also produced hardened axes and other
instruments whose strength and temper cannot be adequately
reproduced to this day. In addition, these ancient coppersmiths
produced a unique, ultrapure, high-quality sheet metal superior to that
produced in the Mediterranean.
GERMAN BOOK FROM 1857 TALKS OF THE ANCIENT
MINERS
In the following newspaper article, reporter Victor F. Lemmor talks
about a German book called Reisen im Nordwesten der Vereinigten
Staaten (Travels in Northwestern Parts of the United States), with
chapters relating to the ancient miners, or “Old People,” who legend
says were the original miners of the copper in this area. It is interesting
to note that the term Old People is a cognate of Anasazi (Ancient
Ones), which refers to the original builders of the cliff dwellings in the
southwestern United States.
LARGE SKELETONS FOUND IN MINNESOTA
BEMIDJI DAILY PIONEER, OCTOBER 3, 1916
Some large mounds have been found in this territory. In some places a
number of pieces of pottery have been unearthed. It will be
remembered that when the dam at International Falls was under
construction several hundred pieces of tempered copper were unearthed
from a depth of 15 feet. The articles consisted of fish hooks, knives,
spears, and arrows. The art of tempering copper, which was known by
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these early mound builders, is now a lost art. An unusually large
skeleton was also unearthed and thought to have been a woman.
Physicians who have examined the skeleton declare that it represented
a type of early prehistoric persons who were seven feet tall or more and
who possessed an especially large lower jaw. They drew this
conclusion because the skeleton found was that of a person of very
large stature. The jaw bone was wide and its construction is said to be a
special gift of nature to the early man in order that he could masticate
the coarser foods which then made up his subsistence. The skull is very
large. The well rounded forehead gives evidence of considerable
development of intelligence of the Rainy Lake territory. . . . The
skeleton will be sent to the Minnesota Historical Society.
TRACING THE ANCIENT COPPER CULTURE
BY VICTOR E. LEMMOR
_ DAILY GLOBE, NOVEMBER 20, 1969 _
According to Dr. George I. Quimby, the known world of the Old
Copper Indians was the Upper Great Lakes region. Some of these
prehistoric people lived as early as 7,000 years ago, and others were
still around 3,000 years ago. In addition to being miners, these ancient
workmen were the first known fabricators of metal in America. It is
believed that the Old Copper Indians must have been rather tall,
rugged, and muscular. Dr. Quimby states that by using as a basis the
available archaeological evidence, some of the techniques of the
prehistoric copper miners have been reconstructed.
ANCIENT COPPER MINING METHODS
REVEALED
Among the discoveries made, which determined these conclusions, are
remnants of wooden levers, parts of birch bark buckets, hammer stones,
and charcoal from fires found in old mining pits. These prehistoric men
dug pits in order to follow the veins of pure copper from surface
outcrop-pings. They broke the copper from the rock formations with
the help of water and fire and heavy beach boulders. According to Dr.
Quimby, the mining method practiced was to heat the rock surrounding
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the pure copper with fire and then crack it by sudden dousing with cold
water. After that the copper was pounded loose with boulder hammers
and then pried away with wooden levers.
The pure copper was fashioned into weapons and tools by cold
hammering. To prevent the copper from becoming too brittle, it was
alternately heated and chilled. Smelting and casting of copper were
unknown.
DATING THE MINES
In addition to these three groups of mines on the Upper Peninsula, the
copper on Isle Royale was also known to the aborigines for thousands
of years. Professor Roy W. Drier, who is in the department of
metallurgical engineering at the Michigan College of Mining and
Technology at Houghton, Michigan, informed this writer in November
of 1959 that he had found mining that had been done at least 3,000
years ago on Isle Royale.
His evidence points to the possibility of the “Island Miners” being of
an earlier race or culture than the “Prehistorics” who mined in the
Keweenaw Peninsula. In 1953 Prof. Drier accompanied by Dr. James
B. Griffin, director of the Museum of Anthropology, University of
Michigan, dug in the old copper pits of Isle Royale to a depth of 70
inches. They unearthed a charred log section, which was dated by
carbon methods at the University of Michigan Memorial Phoenix
Laboratory as being 3,000 years old plus or minus 350 years. In 1954
Prof. Drier again dug in the same ancient pit and took out another
charred log section, which was dated at 3,800 years plus or minus 500
years.
This writer’s personal interest in the prehistoric copper miners began
just a few years ago at the time he was president of the Historical
Society of Michigan. There was called to his attention a German book
published in 1857 and written by Johann Georg Kohl, and it is titled
Reisen im Nordwesten der Vereinigten Staaten, (Travels in
Northwestern Parts of the United States). Kohl was a German
geographer and researcher who devoted most of his life to scientific
investigations.
The chapters relating to the ancient miners or “Old People” as
designated by Kohl, were translated from the German into English by
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Mrs. Helen Longyear Paul, curator of the Marquette County Historical
Museum, at Marquette, Michigan. After Mrs. Paul made a detailed
study of Johann Kohl’s descriptive chapter on the prehistoric copper
mines of the Ontonagon country, she and two men from Marquette
visited the area referred to in Kohl’s book. By following the directions
given in Kohl’s travels, they, too, discovered the pits and hammer
stones that had captivated Kohl over a hundred years before.
FIRST MODERN COPPER MINE IN 1730
The first actual modern mining operations were commenced near the
forks of the Ontonagon about 1730 by Sieur de la Ronde, and later in
1761 continued by Alexander Henry, an English traveler and fur trader
who became interested in exploiting copper discoveries near Lake
Superior.
THE MOST COPPER ARTIFACTS FOUND IN
WISCONSIN
While Minnesota and Michigan were nearer these copper sources, it is
in Wisconsin that the greatest number of Indian-made articles, that is
artifacts of copper, has been found. Indeed, more copper Indian
artifacts have been found in Wisconsin than in any other state in the
Union. There are on record, at present, over 20,000 specimens of Indian
copper manufacture found in Wisconsin and produced from the mines
of the Lake Superior region. Copper was found in nuggets of all sizes
and in the seams of copper-bearing rock.
It is assumed that the Indians doing the mining took these sheets, a
typical size being about three-sixteenths of an inch, and ten inches long
by eight inches wide, and the nuggets home to their village artisans
who in turn worked them into ornaments and tools.
At Indian sites all along Green Bay there have been found many
copper chippings: definite evidence of copper workshops there. At Two
Rivers, Sheboygan, Waupaca, and Green Lake especially large amounts
of copper chips and other copper pieces have been found as proof of
extensive copper manufacture in those parts. The distribution was also
extensive.
THE COPPER TRADE WAS SOUTH, EAST,
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AND WEST
Findings indicate that native copper, as well as the finished artifacts,
went in trade east, south, and west. Perhaps in this way Wisconsin
Indians secured the ivory-colored flint of Ohio, the obsidian of the
Yellowstone, and the beautiful conch shells from the seashores, all of
which have been found among the Wisconsin Indian relics.
Unmistakably, Wisconsin was the seat of the Indian copper industry,
the products of which passed through the avenues of trade to many and
distant lands.
With the stone tools that the Indian coppersmith made, he formed the
copper artifacts. He found early in his work that hammering on a piece
of freshly-mined copper made it crumble, so he experimented until he
developed a practical method.
The first step in this method is called annealing and consists of the
alternate heating and dipping in water of the copper, which made it
tough and manageable. Then by hammering, grinding, cutting, and
polishing, he produced the finished object, and by embossing and
perforating, he decorated it.
THE MYSTERY OF THE SHEET COPPER AND
THE UNIQUE COPPER CONTENT
CONTAINED THEREIN
Finding many objects made of sheet copper in Wisconsin brought up
controversy as to whether the Indians produced these sheets or got them
from Europe in trade. Chemical analysis showed that the Indian
coppersmith did not melt or temper copper. The free silver found in the
artifacts studied would not be seen if the copper had not been tempered.
Analysis shows that the Indian-made sheets, to cite one instance,
contained 99.73 percent copper; .34 percent iron and .023 percent
silver, while the European trade sheets showed the presence of bismuth,
zinc, antimony, nickel, and arsenic and that they were obviously
tempered. By annealing and hammering only, the Indian coppersmiths
made sheet copper out of chunks and welded pieces upon one another
and together.
Copper was used a great deal for decoration, the commonest
ornaments being beads. These were made by winding a thin strip of
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copper around a sort of spindle, the number of times around regulating
the size, and by drilling through solid pieces and hammering them into
shape. Hammering and polishing made a handsome bead. A chain of
copper beads, now famous among finds, was discovered to be over 11
feet long, and to contain over 500 beads, each one-fourth inch in
diameter.
Innumerable bangles, rings, pendants, breastplates, bracelets, ear
rings, and hair ornaments were made. From the copper breast plate
forged as a medal of honor, to the lovely bracelets and hair ornaments
goes the story of Indian life and romance, if one cares to read it.
THE SCHUMACHER COPPER COLLECTION,
GREEN BAY
Too numerous to mention is the detailed list of other copper artifacts
ranging from spears and arrow points, through knives, adzes and
gouges, to fish hooks and harpoons. The Schumacher collection of
copper artifacts in the Neville Museum in Green Bay offers an
exceptional opportunity for study, as do other museum collections in
Wisconsin and elsewhere.
For those wishing to read more on the subject, an article “Myths and
Legends about Copper,” by Charles E. Brown of the Wisconsin
Historical Museum, published in the recent September issue of the
Wisconsin Archaeologist, will be of much interest.
ALGONQUIAN COPPER WORKINGS THE
LARGEST IN THE NATION
“The lands claimed by the Algonquian Menomonies and recognized as
theirs by the United States has yielded the greatest number of copper
workshops and copper implements of any region in the United States,
showing the Indians to have been accomplished artisans, as for
centuries they manufactured their copper tools and ornaments,” notes
W. C. McKern, associate curator of Anthropology at the Milwaukee
Public Museum.
EVIDENCE FOR WISCONSIN COPPER
MINING 10,000 YEARS AGO
219
ASSOCIATED PRESS, APRIL 25, 1958
Waukesha, Wisconsin: A power shovel has unearthed a chunk of pure
copper, which two Carroll County scientists regard as probable
evidence of the primitive “copper culture” 10,000 years ago. John
Cooper was operating a power shovel Tuesday when the machine
turned up the mass of copper at a subdivision south of here.
Anthropologist Harold Eastman and geologist Benjamin Richason
conjectured that the copper chunk, larger than a man’s fist, probably
was placed in an ancient grave about 100 centuries (10,000) years ago.
SEVEN-THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD FIND AT
LEONARD’S POINT
_ OSHKOSH WISCONSIN DAILY, JUNE 3, 1955 _
Important new evidence expected to provide scientists with further
information concerning the history and culture of ancient Indians in
Wisconsin has been uncovered near Leonard’s Point on Lake Butte des
Morts, it has been revealed by officials of the Oshkosh Museum. The
discoveries were made on the Matt Reigh farm, northwest of the city,
the same site, which produced an interesting series of prehistoric
burials, during excavations carried on by Oshkosh and Madison
anthropologists during the summer of 1953. James E. Lundsted, curator
of anthropology at the local museum, said Tuesday that three more
burials, much older than the 1953 discoveries were found at the Reigh
farm site last month.
The remains of the three prehistoric Indians, Lundsted stated, are
estimated to date back to a period of between 3,000 to 5,000 BC. The
dates of the burials from two years ago have been established at about
500 BC. The new excavations were carried out, beginning May 25 by
Lundsted; Stuart H. Mong, director of the Oshkosh Public Museum;
and Heinz Meyer, Oshkosh High School history teacher and student of
anthropology.
YOUNG BOY TIPS THEM OFF
Lundsted said the new work came about as the result of a “tip” from
Terry Raettig, a boy who lives at Highland Shore, located near the site.
220
The boy called the museum after finding some bones and pottery at the
Reigh farm site. The pottery, described as thick and bearing what
anthropologists refer to as “cord” markings, dated back to later Indian
burials at the Reigh site. “However,” Lundsted stated, “the bones of the
three prehistoric Indians were in poor condition, it was reported,
although the leg bones were well enough preserved to show a heavy
and thick conformation, similar to those found during the 1953
excavation. Five copper points were found between the feet of one of
the skeletons.”
LITERAL RED BONES DISCOVERED
One of the burials was in a narrow ledge of red material, two to three
inches thick. “The red material has not been positively identified,”
museum officials commented, “but appeared to be sand with a high
percentage of iron oxide. The bones had taken on the bright red color
and were also heavily impregnated with copper salts.”
GRAVE GOODS INCLUDE ANTLER BEADS
Grave goods—artifacts buried with the prehistoric Indians—included a
celt or ax, two crescent-shaped knives, a snail shell bracelet and a
number of antler beads. A rolled copper bead was discovered at the site
by Penny Foust, a neighborhood girl.
Scientists said the newly-discovered burials near Leonard’s Point,
were highly important and that they are tentatively believed to be
related to what anthropologists know to be the “Old Copper Culture.”
Other evidence of the “Old Copper Culture” has been found in
Wisconsin at Potosi, at Osceola, and, in 1952, at Oconto. Wood
charcoal found at the Oconto site was sent to the University of Chicago,
where a complicated analysis known as the “carbon 14” test was made.
The test indicated the charcoal was about 5,000 years old. The snail
beads and crescent-shaped knives found at the Reigh site, a museum
official said, are similar to those uncovered at Oconto.
MIDWAY BETWEEN OCONTO AND OSCEOLA
Mr. Lunsted pointed out that the Reigh site is a logical location for
remains of the “old copper culture” being situated about mid-way
between Osceola and the Oconto sites. Further excavations of the
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archaeologically rich Reigh site will be carried out by Osceola
researchers.
Fig. 7.2. Grave goods from a child’s burial on Big Island in Pilley’s Tickle, Notre
Dame Bay, Canada (from The Beothucks or Red Indians by J. P. Howley, 1915,
plate XXXIV)
Fig. 7.3. Miniature diorama of an archaic copper mine, formerly at the Milwaukee
Public Museum
FORTY-THREE SKELETONS FOUND
222
Remains of a total of 43 human beings were uncovered at Osceola by a
team of Oshkosh and Madison anthropologists in the summer of 1953.
Among the important artifacts discovered at that time were two highly-
polished and notched swan bones, a conical copper point, a copper
headdress, two axes made of elk antler and a gorget (or neck
ornament), made of a conch shell.
The Indians of the “old copper culture” used pure copper in
fashioning some of their artifacts but did not have methods for
tempering the metal. Instead they worked it by cold pounding and
annealing techniques.
THE COPPER HEADDRESS
_ OSHKOSH DAILY, JANUARY 9, 1954 _
Another fascinating find was a copper headdress that extended half way
around the upper portion of the skull. The headdress consisted of
flattened strips of pure copper, which, at one time, were fastened
together by a piece of buckskin or fabric. Still another artifact found by
the archaeologists was a “gorget,” or neck ornament, made of a conch
shell. The gorget, which measured about five inches in length, and two
inches in width, had three holes on its long axis for suspension
purposes. The ornament was shaped like the sole of a sandal.
Among the other unusual artifacts were two swan bones about 7 and
8 inches long, both highly polished and both with a series of notches
cut into the sides. The bones may have been used for ceremonial
purposes, but their function is not exactly known.
The excavations of last summer also yielded a conical copper point
of a somewhat different type than the usual run of such objects.
THE ELK ANTLER AXES
The most interesting specimens found at the site, however, were two
axes made of elk antler. The archaeologists’ report indicated that the
axes found on the Reigh farm were different, so far as is known now,
from any previously discovered in the United States.
The 1953 finds at the Reigh farm serve to increase our knowledge of
one of the least known periods in Wisconsin archaeology, covering the
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time period ranging from about 1,000 years before the Christian era, to
about 350 AD.
ACCOUNT OF ARROW FOUND IN
MASTODON
A newspaper article of 30 years ago noted that such an arrow had been
found imbedded in the bones of a mastodon found near the Mississippi
River farther north in the state.
A turning point in Wisconsin prehistory came in 1945, when Dr.
Robert Ritzenthaler, of the Milwaukee Museum, excavated a site near
Potosi. There, the first real evidence of the “Old Copper Culture” was
found in situ. The “Old Copper Culture” refers to a cultural group of
Indians, antecedent to that of the Early Woodland period, which used
copper rather than stone in the manufacture of artifacts.
Dr. R. E. Ritzenthaler, assistant curator of anthropology of the
Milwaukee Museum, was sent by his museum to survey the find. The
trench in which the bodies were buried, he told the Wisconsin State
Journal, is about 80 feet long and 15 feet wide. The bodies were laid
out on the sand of the reef, in the beginning, and covered with black
dirt at a distance of about 5 feet below the present ground level.
“The copper artifacts have been found in the lower level. The copper
awls, 5 and 6 inches long, have been sharpened at both ends and were
probably used in making clothing. The ‘spuds,’ tools with sharp edges
hafted on handles, were used in scooping out dugout canoes, cleaning
skins, and the like,” Dr. Ritzenthaler said.
“The instruments were placed in regular patterns,” according to
Rollo Jamison Beetown, “indicating that the placing of the artifacts was
part of a religious ritual. Burials at the upper level were of a bundle
burial type, in which the bones, collected during the winter, were
buried in a mass ceremony and without placing of copper artifacts.”
DAM CONSTRUCTION DESTROYS MORE
EVIDENCE
The Potosi burial ground had once been on the banks of the Grant
River, but the building of the dam on the Mississippi at Dubuque,
raised the waters to include this in the Mississippi and eat away a part
of the burial ground.
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TWO TYPES OF "COMMON” BURIALS AT
OSCEOLA
The dead at the Osceola site were disposed of in two ways: either
through bundle burial or partial cremation. (Bundle burials were
thought to be of Indians who had died in the winter and whose bodies
had been left on platforms in trees until only the bones remained. These
were then gathered in a bundle for burial in the spring when the ground
thawed.)
ANCIENTS HAD MORE EFFICIENT MINING
METHODS
It appears that the ancient miners went on a different principle from
what they do at the present time. The greatest depth yet found in these
holes is thirty feet—after getting down to a certain depth, they drifted
along the vein, making an open cut. These cuts have been filled nearly
to a level by the accumulation of soil, and we find trees of the largest
growth standing in this gutter, and also timber trees of a very large
growth have grown up and died, and decayed many years since; in the
same place there are now standing trees of over three hundred years
growth. This discovery will lead to a new method of finding veins in
this country, and may be of great benefit to some.
Fig. 7.4. This is a modern photo of a ten-ton block of copper being removed from
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Isle Royale. It is similar in size, but not workmanship, to the smooth-pounded ten-
ton block of copper described below.
TEN-TON CHUNK OF COPPER IS FOUND
Last week they dug down to a new place, and about 12 feet below the
surface found a mass of copper that will weigh from eight to ten tons.
This mass of copper was buried in ashes, and it appears they could
not handle it, and had no means of cutting it, and probably built fire to
melt or separate the rock from it, which might be done by heating, and
then dashing on cold water.
CLEAN AS A NEW CENT
This piece of copper is pure, and clean as a new cent, the upper surface
has been pounded clear and smooth. It appears that this mass of copper
was taken from the bottom of a shaft, the depth of about thirty feet. In
sinking this shaft from where the mass now lies, they followed the
course of the vein, which pitches considerably; this enabled them to
raise it as far as the hole came up with a slant. At the bottom of the
shaft they found skids of black oak, from eight to twelve inches in
diameter: these sticks were charred through, as if burnt; they found
wooden wedges in the same situation. In this shaft they found a miner’s
gad and a narrow chisel made of copper. I do not know whether these
copper tools are tempered or not, but their make displays good
workmanship. They have taken out more than a ton of cobblestones,
which have been used as mallets. These stones are nearly round, with a
score cut around the center, and look as if this score was hatched cut for
the purpose of putting a handle around it.
EVIDENCE FOR WIDESPREAD TRADE
OAKLAND TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 20, 1925
There was a well-developed system of trade among those ancient
aborigines, and marine shells are often found in the mounds of the
Middle West, while articles of native Wisconsin copper occur in those
of West Virginia. In Alabama was dug up a skull filled with snail
shells, for what purpose can hardly be imagined. A gourd-shaped vessel
full of lead ore so pure it was turned into bullets was found in Bellinger
226
County, Missouri. In 1879, the people in the neighborhood of a
Mississippi town, where there are mounds exceptionally rich in pottery,
discovered that such relics had commercial value. A regular mining
fever set in, and men, women and children deserted other tasks to dig
for aboriginal bric-a-brac, which was sold to traders and passed on to
museums and collectors.
Fig 7.5. A postcard of the Indian Mound Cemetery, Marietta, Ohio
GROUP BURIED WITH COPPER MASKS
In a group of mounds near Chillicothe, Ohio, were found dozens of
skeletons wearing copper masks. Presumably the copper came from
Wisconsin, where the Indians, long before Columbus landed, obtained
the metal by building a fire about a rock containing it and then pouring
water on the hot stone, thereby splitting the latter into fragments. The
copper thus procured was heated and beaten out into sheets.
“ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL ARCHAEOLOGICAL
EXCAVATIONS EVER MADE IN WISCONSIN”
A number of articles describe the findings of archaeologist Robert J.
Hruska at an old copper culture site along the Menominee River.
A WOODEN BURIAL CRYPT
227
OSHKOSH DAILY, AUGUST 23, 1961
Within 20 inches of the surface, Hruska and his colleagues uncovered a
wooden burial crypt, fashioned of oak logs with a roof of sewed birch
bark. Because of its proximity to the surface, skeletal material had
disappeared, leaving only the enamel of the teeth.
This burial, like others found this summer, gave evidence of red
ochre: a substance which appears to have had a religious or ceremonial
significance.
THIRTEEN CEREMONIAL BLADES OF
UNIQUE DESIGN
Digging down another foot into the pit, the archaeologist found another
burial. In association with the skull, all that was left of the skeleton
were 13 7-inch ceremonial blades of stone, representing a type never
before found with an Old Copper Culture red-ochre burial. So far this
summer, Hruska has uncovered four burials with blades, each
apparently a set, but differing with each set.
FLEXED BURIALS FOUND
Proceeding another foot down into the pit brought to light the remains
of two individuals in “bundle” or flexed burials. One produced a well-
preserved skull, which indicates that its owner died right at the site
from a severe blow in the face. At each side of the skull, where the ears
had been, was a large animal tooth, which Hruska believes may have
come from an elk.
EVIDENCE OF CREMATION CEREMONY OR
SACRIFICE?
The burial, which was surrounded by upright charred oak logs,
consisted of an adult and a child who had been interred in the flesh and
beneath them the cremated remains of about five other individuals.
“The entire burial,” Hruska said, “was impregnated with red ochre, a
substance widely used by American Indians for religious or ceremonial
purposes.”
GIANT FOUND
228
The other person in this burial was a larger-than-average man. Much of
the skeletal material was preserved, due to the chemical properties of a
large number of copper beads with which he was buried. At about the
7-foot level, Hruska uncovered another “bundle” burial, this one a
cremation.
WRAPPING MATERIAL RECOVERED WITH
44 BLADES
Fortunately, much of the wrapping materials, including strings of
beads, some of them braided, were recovered. Around the bones and
beads was woven matting which, in turn, was wrapped in the skin of an
animal, possibly a beaver. Outer wrapping was a birch bark. Arranged
around this burial at the bottom of a pit was found a set of 44 blades,
with all the points carefully positioned so as to face north.
200 COPPER BEADS AND 9 BLADES
Around each wrist of the adult were seven strands of copper beads,
while a string of some 200 beads was found directly over the skeletal
material. Between the two bodies were nine flint blades—spear heads
or knives—ranging up to 10 inches in length.
Revealing exceptionally fine workmanship, the blades were
manufactured of a type of flint commonly found in Indiana or Illinois,
but never before discovered in association with the Old Copper Culture.
“The implication that they were imported is clear,” commented Hruska.
DISINTEGRATING SKELETONS ARE OF
AVERAGE SIZE
Unfortunately human skeletal material had almost entirely disintegrated
after 3,000 years in the ground, but enough was left to indicate that
physically the Old Copper Culture people were of about average height
for their times, and, judging by the thickness of the bones, stocky and
robust.
UNUSUAL COPPER AWL FOUND
Among the copper artifacts found with the burials were two large and
fine awls, both still showing remnants of wooden handles. One of the
awls is fitted at one end with a beaver tooth, probably indicating that
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the implement performed double duty as a chisel. Other copper grave
goods included two toggle-head harpoons: the first of their kind ever.
ONE HUNDRED HUMAN BURIALS
UNCOVERED
BY CHARLES HOUSE
APPLETON POST-CRESCENT, SEPTEMBER 18, 1961
One of the most successful archaeological excavations ever made in
Wisconsin has come to an end. Archaeologist Robert J. Hruska, the 31-
year-old curator of anthropology at the Oshkosh Public Museum, has
pronounced the digging as “rewarding beyond my wildest dreams.”
The excavations, commenced in July and recently completed, were
made at a burial and village site of a copper age culture settlement of
Indians known to have lived along the Menominee River near here.
Hruska and a crew of volunteer diggers from Menominee succeeded in
excavating more than 7,000 cubic feet of ground, from which more
than 30 multiple human burials consisting of skeletal remains of about
100 Old Copper Culture age people known to have lived here in
prehistoric times were found.
Previous excavations of the Old Copper Culture have shown the
Indians to have lived here 3,000 to 5,000 years ago. Of the many
human skeletons discovered in the dig only three were of individual
burials. Hruska believes that the prehistoric copper people refrained
from winter-time burials because of the frozen ground. They retained
the bodies of their dead until spring-time thaws and buried all persons
who died the previous winter.
RICH MICHIGAN BURIAL FINDS ATTRACT
NATIONAL ATTENTION
OSHKOSH DAILY, DECEMBER 16, 1961
Curator Robert J. Hruska: “The dig has attracted national attention in
archaeological circles because of the wealth of identifiable new
material it produced and the new insights it is yielding into the lives of
230
these rather mysterious early Americans.”
The Old Copper Culture—so named because its members fashioned
a variety of tools and ornaments of cop-per—is the most ancient of
prehistoric Wisconsin-Michigan Indian cultures. This summer’s
expedition produced, to say nothing of a vast number of beads, 79 large
stone blades, ranging in length up to 10 inches; about 15 copper
artifacts, biggest of which is a 12-inch awl, and also including points,
knives, axes, and fish hooks; a variety of stone arrow and spear points,
scrapers, etc.; and three skulls good enough for exhibit purposes.
TWENTY COPPER CULTURE SKELETONS
UNEARTHED IN MICHIGAN
_ OSHKOSH DAILY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1962 _
A total of 20 burials, some of which produced significant artifacts and
other grave goods, have been uncovered this summer during the second
season of a continuing archaeological dig at Menominee, Michigan.
Robert J. Hruska, curator of anthropology at the Oshkosh Public
Museum, said that this summer’s field work, completed last week, had
shed new light on the lives of the rather mysterious prehistoric Indians
who comprised what is known as the Old Copper Culture.
SITE IS AT LEAST 3,000 YEARS OLD
This season’s excavations, which began in mid-June, have also raised
many new questions and pointed the way for further investigations next
summer at the ancient burial and village site, located in an unused
portion of Menominee’s Riverside Cemetery. One of the most
interesting aspects of this year’s work from the scientific viewpoint was
the recovery of a considerable number of pottery shards of a type
associated with Early Woodland—a culture marked by cord-wrapped
and paddle-impressed pottery, and, probably, a lack of agriculture. It
has not yet been definitely established that the Old Copper Culture
people had pottery, and this summer’s yield of pottery fragments might
possibly indicate a temporal overlapping of the final stages of the Old
Copper Culture and Early Woodland. The Menominee site is known to
be at least 3,000 years old.
231
MICA AND THE MOUND BUILDERS
Along with the fabled ancient copper mines found in the northern
peninsula of Michigan, the mica mines of North Carolina are some of
the most significant natural resource sites in North America. The
importance of mica to the mound-builder culture cannot be
overemphasized. Throughout the United States and Mexico, numerous
mound builder burials have revealed a plethora of mica jewelry,
ornaments, and decorations, the majority of which can be linked to
these mica mines, which archaeologists estimate have been worked
since ancient prehistoric times.
EXTREMELY ANCIENT MICA MOUNDS
ACKLEY ENTERPRISE, MAY 23, 1884
At present North Carolina produces two-thirds of all the mica mined in
the United States. The center of this industry is at Barkerville, Mitchell
County, North Carolina. Senator Clingman, a gentleman of scientific
knowledge, had noticed in two geological investigations of the
formation of Mitchell County ancient mounds upon which there were
large dumps from some ancient mines. He opened several, but found no
precious metals, only mica, which he believed worthless. Therefore, the
exploration of these mounds was abandoned. A few months later a
“cute Yankee” from Connecticut, while prospecting the country for
minerals, and coming upon a mound, which Clingman had opened,
upon examining the mica, and determining its value, soon afterward
obtained a lease upon the property in question and by his energy and
practical knowledge of the business soon made a handsome fortune. At
the present time there are in this section but two mines that are large
producers, the Cloudlook, now 100 feet deep, and the Kay mine, the
most valuable property of its kind in the country, which is being
worked at a depth of 300 feet and producing two tons monthly. The
Clarrisa mine near Barkerville, at one time produced about one-half of
the total product of the United States, but after being worked to a depth
of 565 feet has been abandoned, as the vein has pinched and the mine is
now very wet. A large portion of the product of North Carolina is
mined by farmers who eke out a scanty subsistence by prospecting for
this valuable mineral.
232
In this mica belt, which is thirty miles wide and one hundred miles
long, the mica is found near the surface and of as good a quality as that
found at a considerable depth, which is unquestionably a common
experience everywhere, since mica is not as quickly oxidized as other
minerals. After the vein is opened a few feet in depth, say 10 or 20 feet,
if no pay mica is found the prospect is usually abandoned. These quasi¬
miners are often satisfied with the finding of a few pockets yielding
$100 to $200 return for a season’s labor.
THE MOST ANCIENT MICA MINES ARE THE
BEST
It is a notable fact that all the best mines of North Carolina are of
prehistoric origin. The ancient people working these mines were
doubtless contemporaneous with the mound builders of the Ohio
Valley, since in Chillicothe, Circleville, and other places have been
found in the mounds adjacent sheets of mica covering human remains;
also, mica sheets lying upon ancient altars, evidently used for sacrificial
purposes, while perforated disks of mica found in graves suggest they
were worn as ornaments.
Mica was well known in prehistoric America, traces of its use being
widespread. A great shaft near Mount Mitchell, North Carolina, was
discovered in 1869, and this not only solved the question as to the
origin of the early supply, but gave mica mining in the United States its
first impetus. In this region, for many years, mica was largely used as a
medium of exchange between farmers and storekeepers.
A DETAILED INVENTORY OF GRAVE GOODS
Mica jewelry and grave goods are common in many mound-builder
burials across the country. This not only argues for the high regard the
ancients had for mica, but also shows the widespread trade in this
material from an extremely ancient date. The sheet mica found in North
Carolina is unique, and it should be noted that between the courses of
the pyramids at Teotihuacan there are to be found massive sheets of
mica. Mica chips are also found in many of the pyramids’ walls.
Traditional archaeologists say this material came from mines in the
Amazon, while the much more likely explanation is that it came from
North Carolina.
233
History of Delaware County, 1879
We were shown some interesting relics consisting of a queen
conch shell, some isinglass (mica), and several peculiarly shaped
pieces of slate which were found on the farm of Solomon Hill,
Concord Township. The mound is situated on the banks of a rocky
stream. Two human skeletons were also found in the mound, one
about seven feet long, the other an infant. The shell was found at
the left cheek of the large skeleton. A piece of slate about one-by-
six inches was under the chin. The slate was provided with two
smooth holes, apparently for the purpose of tying it to its position.
Another peculiarly shaped piece with one hole was on the chest,
and another with some isinglass (mica) was on the left hand.
234
8
TREASURES OF GIANT BURIAL GROUNDS
The majority of sites that reveal burials of giants also yield evidence of
a very sophisticated material culture. The following story gives a
reconstruction of the amazing finds made at the extensive complex of
mounds in the vicinity of Charleston, West Virginia. These mounds
were first breached and studied in 1838 by the state’s geological survey
team and later by the Smithsonian in 1883. This report is from a front
page feature in the state’s largest and most respected newspaper at the
time, and because it is so precise and detailed and, in many cases,
straight from the Smithsonian’s own report, I will be quoting from it at
length.
THE GIANTS WERE FINE ARTISANS
CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL, SEPTEMBER 23, 1923
Among the most interesting artifacts unearthed were three worked and
shaped pieces of cannel coal, a special finely-textured variety of
bituminous, which may have come from one of the outcroppings along
our local streams.
One was in pendant form, one a disc, and the third of no particular
form, probably unfinished. Fragments of seven stone and five clay
pipes were found. There were two splendid bone fish hooks and many
bone awls and pins. Clay balls about the size of marbles may have been
used in children’s games. Miniature “toy” pottery vessels were
discovered. Objects of worked antler included a chisel, projectile
points, and flakers. There were 341 triangular flint projectile points and
90 flint projectile points of other types. Stone celts, adzes, balls, and a
perforated stone disc were brought to light. Other discs of perforated
mussel shell were found. A study of the animal and bird bones
indicated that the white-tailed deer was very common, also wild turkey,
elk and black bear to a lesser extent. Evidence of animals no longer
235
here included elk (28 fragments), bobcat (five fragments), wolf (one)
and beaver (eleven).
FOUR HUNDRED SKELETONS UNEARTHED
AT ALABAMA MOUND
BY JEROME SCHWEITZER
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA, FEBRUARY 27, 1930
EXCAVATIONS OF MUSEUM AT MOUNDVILLE
PRODUCE 400 INDIAN SKELETONS— 7'6" GIANT
AMONG THEM
Some 400 skeletons, the sizes of which vary from unborn infants to
male adults and whose ages were estimated at 1,000 to 5,000 years,
have been uncovered at the Indian mounds at Moundville by the
Alabama Museum of Natural History. From his offices at the
University of Alabama, Walter B. Jones, director of the museum,
announced that one skeleton measured seven feet six inches in height.
The museum party, headed by Director Jones and Curator William L.
Halton and consisting of David de Jarnette, assistant curator, and Carl
T. Jones, topographer, is completing its first period of excavations. The
party is digging in an area recently purchased by the Museum and
which has been designated as Moundville. In addition to the remains of
400 Indians, the excavation party has taken from the mounds hundreds
of valuable artifacts.
AVERAGE HEIGHT OVER SIX FEET
All skeletons unearthed whose bones were strong enough to be
preserved have been brought to the Museum. “Most of the large
skeletons brought out were found in the vicinity of Mound ‘G,’” Dr.
Jones said, “the majority averaging over six feet or more in height. All
of the graves from which the skeletons were taken were earthen except
one, which was a very fine type of stone box burial, which is so
prevalent in Tennessee and Kentucky. As a whole the teeth were in
very remarkable condition.”
236
Fig. 8.1. Archaeologists have said this stone duck bowl found at Moundville is
arguably the most significant prehistoric artifact ever found in the United States
(courtesy of Jeffrey Reed).
A MYSTERIOUS STONE DISC UNDER ONE
SKULL
One of the most remarkable burials encountered was that of a very
prominent member of the tribe, possibly the chief of a tribe that resided
around Mound “E.” This burial carried a stone disc under the skull, two
square pots, and three miscellaneous pots; this pottery is superb ware
and beautiful in design.
In addition, the skeleton wore many shell beads at the neck, the
wrists and there were seven beads on the right ankle and eleven on the
left.
COPPER IS THE ONLY METAL FOUND
The only metal encountered during the excavations was copper, which
appeared to be a great favorite with the mound builders.
Red, yellow, and other pigments were met with everywhere, and all
discs showed the presence of white to pearl-gray paint, possibly made
of lead carbonate, showing that these people carried on elaborate rituals
and procedures.
HUNDREDS OF ANCIENT ARTIFACTS FOUND
237
Director Jones announced that among the group of artifacts, 150 pots of
various kinds, four pipes, ten stone discs, one copper pendant, six
copper ear plugs, about seventy-five bone awls or piercing instruments,
100 discoidal stones, some made from igneous rocks brought in from
other localities, thousands of shell beads ranging from one and one half
inches in length to very minute objects. Many of the beads were spool
shaped, some discoidal, others irregular.
FOODS WERE PLENTIFUL—REFUSE
CAREFULLY BURIED
Their foods consisted of the meats of various animals, fowls, and fresh¬
water mussel shells. The latter type of food was duplicated in one very
fine vessel of earthenware. Numerous bones of deer, bear, turkey, and
fish were found with burials in pots and in dumps bordering the burial
ground. Incidentally, the dumps, or refuse heaps, appeared to have been
buried the same as the human bodies.
Fig. 8.2. Engraved stone palette from Moundville, illustrating a horned rattlesnake,
perhaps from the great serpent of the southeastern ceremonial complex (courtesy
of Jeffrey Reed)
238
REMARKABLE SQUARE POT RECOVERED
The most remarkable object met with by the party was a square pot,
ornamented by brilliant red and pearl-gray circles. Each circle was
fringed by a pearl-gray ring. This is perhaps the finest vessel ever to be
taken from Moundville. Several other colored pots were encountered,
several of which were very remarkable. In 1904-05, Dr. Clarence
Moore, connected with the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, found
only three colored pots, and these were rather rude.
VARIOUS ANIMAL EFFIGIES AT
MOUNDVILLE FIND
The art of the mound builders is characterized by various effigies
including human heads and sometimes bodies, heads of ducks, owls,
alligators, frogs, fish, eagles, serpents, rattle snakes, etc. The rattle
snake is often portrayed as having horns and wings, making up what is
termed the “flying circle.”
The party secured three excellent frog bowls. Although the Indians
sometimes exaggerated certain features, there is no question about the
great accuracy of their artistic endeavors.
CLAY BRICK FOUND IN MOUND
On Mound “B,” 57 feet in height and one of the most remarkable
Indian mounds in the world, were found several pots probably placed
there during some ceremonial rites, for no human bones were found
with them and the pits in which they had been placed were carefully
covered with a very nice type of clay brick.
The party was able to spot 33 distinct mounds within the area. Of the
33, the hollow square consists of 16 prominent mounds on the
circumference with the largest and finest within the square. It is
assumed that the Chief lived on the high mound overlooking the entire
area and that tribal ceremonies were carried on upon the great mound
just to the south of the Chief’s abode. It is further assumed that lesser
Chiefs occupied the lesser mounds, while the villagers lived in the
areas adjoining the mounds. The northern rim of the hollow square
overlooks the Black Warrior River. The entire plain is well above high
water level.
239
In 1871, a Canadian newspaper article reported on a find from
Cayuga, New York, in which two hundred skeletons were removed
from a collapsed mound. . . . These skeletons were said to be in a
perfect state of preservation and that “the men were of gigantic stature,
some of them measuring nine feet, very few of them being less than
seven feet.”
NIAGARA’S ANCIENT CEMETERY OF
GIANTS
DAILY TELEGRAPH, TORONTO, ONTARIO, AUGUST 23, 1871
A REMARKABLE SIGHT: TWO HUNDRED
SKELETONS IN CAYUGA TOWNSHIP
A SINGULAR DISCOVERY BY A TORONTONIAN
AND OTHERS—A VAST GOLGOTHA OPENED
TO VIEW —SOME REMAINS OF THE "GIANTS
THAT WERE IN THOSE DAYS” FROM OUR OWN
CORRESPONDENTS.
Cayuga, New York: On Wednesday last. Rev. Nathaniel Wardell,
Messers Orin Wardell (of Toronto), and Daniel Fredenburg were
digging on the farm of the latter gentleman, which is on the banks of
the Grand River, in the township of Cayuga.
When they got to five or six feet below the surface, a strange sight
met them. Piled in layers, one upon top of the other, were some two
hundred skeletons of human beings nearly perfect: around the neck of
each one being a string of beads.
There were also deposited in this pit a number of axes and skimmers
made of stone. In the jaws of several of the skeletons were large stone
pipes, one of which Mr. O. Warded took with him to Toronto a day or
two after this Golgotha was unearthed.
These skeletons are those of men of gigantic stature, some of them
240
measuring nine feet, very few of them being less than seven feet. Some
of the thigh bones were found to be at least a foot longer than those at
present known, and one of the skulls being examined completely
covered the head of an ordinary person.
These skeletons are supposed to belong to those of a race of people
anterior to the Indians.
Some three years ago, the bones of a mastodon were found
embedded in the earth about six miles from this spot. The pit and its
ghastly occupants are now open to the view of any who may wish to
make a visit there.
EARLY EASTERN OUTPOST FOR THE MOUND BUILDERS
The primacy of river routes in relationship to the placement of mound
builder sites can be seen everywhere in the United States. In this case
the Allegheny River is singled out as a major ingress route into western
Pennsylvania and New York State.
RICH BURIALS AT SUGAR RUN ATTRACT SMITHSONIAN
On October 20, 1941, we have this report on the Smithsonian’s
involvement in excavations at the Sugar Run Indian Mounds in Warren,
Pennsylvania, by Dr. Wesley Bliss and Edmund Carpenter, in
association with the state historical commission and representatives
from the Smithsonian, including Dr. William N. Fenton.
The central or most important find, was of two rock cists each
containing an uncremated skeleton in good preservation. Deposited
with one of these, beneath the skull, were fifty-three cache blades;
near its feet, quantities of red and yellow ochre, a gorget and a
sheet of mica. Near the center of the same burial was a lump of
galena (crystal lead). Mica, and cache blades were found, too, with
the second skeleton.
The earlier Sugar Run people appear to represent an eastern
outpost for the “mound builders” of the Mississippi drainage basin.
The Allegheny River suggests itself as the corridor through which
these people penetrated into Western Pennsylvania and New York.
These people probably flourished until at least 1000 CE.
No intimate connection can be traced between the mound
241
builders of Sugar Run and the “Cornplanter” band or the other
Senecas living just across the line in New York State. The former
appear to have lived along and disappeared from the upper
Allegheny many years before the ancestors of the present Senecas
first appeared hereabouts.
MATERIAL TO BE CATALOGUED AND PLACED IN
SMITHSONIAN MUSEUM
As we have seen time and time again in this book, major caches of
archaeological material are handed over to the Smithsonian, only later
to disappear down the memory hole of traditional research. The article
by Fenton continues . ..
“Material recovered from this site will be studied by experts over
several months,” said Dr. C. E. Schaeffer of the state historical
commission in a speech also attended by Dr. William N. Fenton of
the Smithsonian, who was there to consult as a Seneca specialist.
When the returns are all in formal reports of the investigations
will be published and distributed in professional quarters to make
the information available to archaeologists in other areas. Leaflets,
illustrated talks, exhibits, and the like, will be prepared for the non¬
professional.
Finally, the artifacts will be placed in permanent storage or on
exhibition at some central repository for the benefit of the serious
or casual student of archaeology.
1880 HISTORY OF INDIANA COUNTY REVEALS INDIAN
LORE
A great deal of local Indian lore is recorded in the old 1880 History of
Indiana County. A few colorful Indian names have continued until the
present, reminding us of earlier times. The name “Kiskiminetas” is of
Indian origin, but there is some difference of opinion as to its meaning.
Based on stem words from the Indian language, one meaning is “plenty
of walnuts.” Rev. John Heckewelder, a Moravian missionary from the
time of the Revolutionary War, said it meant “make daylight.” John
McCullough, captured in Franklin County by Indians in 1756, wrote of
being taken to an old-town at “Keesk-kshee-man-nit-teos,” meaning
242
“cut spirit” and located at the junction of the Loyalhanna and the
Conemaugh. Conemaugh is also a name of Indian origin and means
“long fishing place” or “otter creek.”
SEVENTEEN BURIALS UNCOVERED
As we begin to catalogue the mound builder burial practices, one of the
major burial styles is “flexed” burial, where the knees are drawn up to
the chest.
Seventeen burials were uncovered in the excavated portions of the
tract; ten children and infants, four adult males, two adult females, and
one unidentified adult. “Most had been buried in a flexed position, with
knees dawn up to the chest.”
THE MISSING GIANTS IN NORTH CAROLINA
In North Carolina, significant finds were made in the Yadkin Valley of
Caldwell County in 1883 that included one group of four skeletons in
seated positions and a pair lying on their backs. One of the recumbent
skeletons was of a man who was reported to be seven feet tall. At
another site in the North Carolina foothills, twenty-six skeletons were
found in unusual burial positions associated with other mound builder
sites. In yet another location, sixteen skeletons were found in seated,
squatting, and prone positions in the center of which was a skeleton
standing upright in a large stone cist, which is a burial chamber made
of stone or a hollow tree.
The following section is from an October 18, 1962, Associated Press
article that includes extensive quotes from a report written for the
Smithsonian. It was published in the North Carolina-based Lenoir
News and the Virginia Bee and was also syndicated nationally. This
article is of great interest as it documents the Smithsonian’s
involvement in the dig, as well as the institution’s confiscation of the
evidence for further study.
SIXTEEN NORTH CAROLINA SKELETONS
SHIPPED TO THE SMITHSONIAN
BY NANCY ALEXANDER
243
ASSOCIATED PRESS, OCTOBER 18, 1962
In 1883 the foothill section of North Carolina became the site of intense
excavations for Indian relics. Dr. James Mason Spainhour, a Lenoir
dentist and Indian authority, discovered several large mounds in the
area. Relics, which he and others unearthed, so aroused the interest of
officials of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington that a
representative, J. P. Rogan, was sent to the area to assist with the
excavations.
Rogan wrote a comprehensive report of Caldwell County findings
using sketches to illustrate each of five notable mounds discovered. All
were located in the Yadkin Valley area now known as Happy Valley.
After skeletons were carefully removed and labeled, they were sent to
the Smithsonian. Later one of the mounds was carefully reproduced in
miniature for public viewing.
It was on the T. L. Nelson farm about a mile and a half southeast of
Patterson, that two important discoveries were made. “The first mound
was only about 18 inches in height from first appearances,” writes
Rogan. “Of circular shape it was about 38 feet in diameter. A pit had
been dug about three feet deep, with the center area being about six feet
in depth.
“Sixteen skeletons were found in various positions, some squatting,
some reclining, while others were in small stone sepultures of water-
worn rocks,” continues Rogan in the official Smithsonian report. “In
the center was a skeleton standing upright in a large stone cist. Also
found were stones shaped like disks and pitted. There were celts, crude
bones and soapstone pipes, black paint made from molded nuts and
charcoal.”
TWENTY-SIX-MORE NORTH CAROLINA
SKELETONS FOUND
“On the W. D. Jones property two miles east of Patterson, a fourth
excavation was made,” reports Rogan to the Smithsonian.
In a low circular mound about 32 feet in diameter and three feet in
depth, 26 skeletons were discovered. Relics included celts, disks, shell
beads, food cups, crescent shaped pieces of copper, pipes, red and black
paint, broken pottery, and charcoal.
244
As a result of the excavations excitement spread throughout the
region. People began exploring hillocks and mounds in all vicinities.
Other discoveries, which went unrecorded, were made. John P. Perry
and John M. Houck, exploring an old Indian camp site near the present
Brown Mountain Beach, found many relics.
THE MANY MOUNDS OF TENNESSEE
I have already included excerpts detailing some of the amazing
accounts in Dr. John Haywood’s wonderful book from 1823, The
Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee. Perhaps the most
amazing finds described in the book were the tiny mounds that
contained caskets of the three-foot-tall “moon-eyed children,” who
were pygmies that were said to accompany the giants. The three-foot-
tall pygmies were originally said to have come from North Carolina,
and legends say they were mischievous and only liked to come out at
night. Comparisons with leprechauns immediately come to mind
reading this. Cherokee lore recounts that they waged war against these
moon-eyed people and drove them from their home in Hiwassee, a
village in what is now Murphy, North Carolina, pushing them west into
Tennessee.
In addition to numerous giants and pygmies, Haywood discovered
grave goods, including bloody axes, a stone trumpet hunting horn,
carved mastodon bones, and soapstone statues and pipes. In a cave on
the south side of the Cumberland River, a secret room was discovered
that was twenty-five feet square and showed signs of engineering, as it
contained a large rock-cut well and the skeleton of a blond-haired giant.
Outside of Sparta, a standing stone was discovered that marked the
burial of more oversized skeletons. In another burial at the top of a
nearby hill, carved ivory beads were found of the “finest and best
quality,” while in a dig at Ohio Falls, Roman coins depicting Claudius
II and Maximinus II were uncovered. It was reported that in 1794, an
ancient furnace was discovered and in association with it a bar of iron
was found, as well as annealed and hardened copper implements.
The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, 1823
By Dr. John Haywood
It would be an endless labor to give a particular description of all
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the mounds in Tennessee. They are numerous upon the rivers,
which empty into the Mississippi, running from the dividing ridge
between that river and Tennessee. They are found upon Duck river,
the Cumberland, upon the Little Tennessee and its waters, and
upon the Big Tennessee, upon Frenchbroad and upon Elk river.
Fig. 8.3. An illustration of the Tennessee dig led by Dr. John Haywood, 1823
The trees are of more recent growth which are upon the mounds that
are found in the last settlements of the Natchez; for instance, near the
town of Natchez, and on the waters of the Mississippi within the
present limits of Tennessee than those are which grow upon the
mounds in other parts of the country: a circumstance, which furnishes
the presumption, that the ancient builders of the latter were expelled
from the other parts of Tennessee, at a period corresponding with the
ages of the trees which the whites found growing upon them.
A careful description of a few of these mounds in West and East
Tennessee will put us in possession of the properties belonging to them
generally. In the county of Sumner, at Bledsoe’s lick, eight miles
northeast from Gallatin, about 200 yards from the lick, in a circular
enclosure, between Bledsoe’s lick creek and Bledsoe’s spring branch,
upon level ground, is a wall 15 or 18 inches in height, with projecting
angular elevations of the same height as the wall and within it, are
about 16 acres of land.
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Fig. 8.4. Engraved shell from a Tennessee mound, from The Problem of the Ohio
Mounds by Cyrus Thomas, Smithsonian Institute, 1889
In the interior is a raised platform, from 13 to 15 feet above the
common surface, about 200 yards from the wall to the south, and
about 50 from the northern part of it. This platform is 60 yards
length and breadth, and is level on the top. And is to the east of a
mound to which it joins, of 7 or 8 feet higher elevation, or 8 feet
from the common surface to the summit, about 20 feet square. On
the eastern side of the latter mound, is a small cavity, indicating
that steps were once there for the purpose of ascending from the
platform to the top of the mound.
In the year 1785, there grew on the top of the mound a black oak
three feet through. There is no water within the circular enclosure
or court. Upon the top of the mound was ploughed up some years
ago, an image made of sandstone. On one cheek was a mark
resembling a wrinkle, passing perpendicularly up and down the
cheek. On the other cheek were two similar marks. The breast was
that of a female, and prominent. The face was turned obliquely up,
towards the heavens. The palms of the hands were turned upwards
before the face and at some distance from it, in the same direction
247
that the face was. The knees were drawn near together, and the
feet, with the toes towards the ground, were separated wide enough
to admit of the body being seated between them.
The attitude seemed to be that of adoration. The head and upper
part of the forehead were covered with a cap or mitre or bonnet
from the lower part of which came horizontally a brim, from the
extremities of which the cap extended upwards conically. The
color of the image was that of a dark infusion of coffee. If the front
of the image was placed to the east, the countenance obliquely
elevated, and the uplifted hands in the same direction would be
toward the meridian sun.
About ten miles from Sparta, in White county, a conical mound
was lately opened, and in the center of it was found a skeleton
eight feet in length. With it was found a stone of the flint kind,
very hard, with two flat sides, having in the center circular hollows
exactly accommodated to the balls of the thumb and forefinger.
This stone was an inch and a half in diameter, the form exactly
circular. It was about one third of an inch thick, and made smooth
and flat, for rolling, like a grindstone, to the form of which, indeed,
the whole stone was assimilated. When placed upon the floor, it
would roll for a considerable time without falling.
The whole surface was smooth and well-polished, and must have
been cut and made smooth by some hard metallic instrument. No
doubt it was buried with the deceased, because for some reason he
had set a great value on it in his lifetime, and had excelled in some
accomplishment to which it referred.
The color of the stone was a dingy white, inclining to a darkish
yellow. At the side of this skeleton were also found two flat stones,
about six inches long, two and a half wide at the lower part, and
about one and a half at the upper end, widening in the shape of an
ax or hatchet from the upper to the lower end. The thickness of the
stone was about one tenth of an inch. An inch below the upper end
exactly equidistant from the lateral edges, a small hole is neatly
bored through each stone, so that by a string run through, the stone
might be suspended off the side or from the neck as an ornament.
One of these stones is the common limestone. The other is
semitransparent, so as to be darkened by the hand placed behind it
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and resembles in texture those stalactical formations, like white
stone, which are made in the bottoms of caves by the dripping of
water. When broken, there appears a grain running from one flat
side to the other, like the shootings of ice or saltpeter, of a whitish
color inclining to yellow. The latter stones are too thin and slender,
for any operation upon other substances, and must have been
purely ornamental.
The first described stone must have been intended for rolling.
For why take so much pains to make it circular, if to be used in
flinging? Or why, if for the latter purpose, so much pain taken to
make excavations adapted to the thumb and finger. The conjecture
seems to be a probable one that it was used in some game played
upon the same principles as that called ninepins; and the little
round balls, like marbles, but of a larger size, were so disposed as
that the rolling stone should pass through them.
Such globular stone, it is already stated, was found in a mound in
Maury County. With this large skeleton were also found eight
beads and a human tooth. The beads were circular and of a bulbous
form. The largest about one fourth of an inch in diameter, the
others smaller. The greater part of them tumescent from the edge to
the center, at which a hole was perforated for a string to pass
through and to connect them. The inner sides were hard and white,
like lime indurated by some chemical process. The outside was a
thin coal of black crust.
OKLAHOMA PICTURE WRITING
BY RAY E. COLTON
_ MIAMI, OKLAHOMA, DECEMBER 10, 1939 _
Yes! The tombs of a long-vanished race of mound builders have been
found near Langley, in Mayes County, site of the Grand River dam, and
much is expected to be learned from these finds after investigating
archaeologists and anthropologists complete their studies of the finds
which have been made.
The pottery, consisting of drinking vessels, water bowls, and so forth
has been found in the excavated mounds near Langley, and also
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recently in mounds unearthed near Grove in Delaware County, even to
designs such as the Thunder Bird. Arrow heads, which have been found
at Langley and also in the Grove “diggings,” are of many designs and
sizes.
In the slender fishing or hunting point type, made of some material
resembling glass, the symmetry and design are perfect, thus reflecting a
remarkable degree of ability on the part of the manufacturers. Battle or
war points, ranging in size from eight to ten inches, and about two
inches in width at their widest point near the center, are of two types of
material, namely obsidian “black” and flint “gray.” A study in the area
of the vicinity of these finds by geologists fails to show any material
corresponding to these types of rocks, and on the basis of these finds, it
is assumed that the material to make these points was brought from
some distant point in either southern Kansas or central Missouri, where
some of this material exists. The balance of the war points is perfect
and when held in the palm of the hand, remains in a perfect balanced
position.
Picture writings which have been found near Grove show in crude
design a hunter chasing a buffalo with a spear of this type.
MUCH LARGER THAN PRESENT-DAY
HUMANS
Some of the burials, which have been unearthed at the dam site, appear
with head to the north, while others appear with head to the south. The
meaning of this has not been determined. Some evidences of the
practice of masonry are noted in some of the finds, and it is believed
that the mound builders had knowledge of this craft. Certain skeleton
remains have considerable arrow heads, beaded work, and other
artifacts around them. It is theorized that the person possessed some
rank of standing within the tribal councils and was thus designated by
the artifacts buried with him.
250
Fig. 8.5. Examples of copper and stone work: pre-Columbian copper artifacts from
Oklahoma, Missouri, and Illinois (courtesy of Herb Roe)
Most of the skeleton remains are much larger than present day
humans and the race must have presented a strange sight owing to the
extreme heights of its members.
A GIANT RACE
MEMPHIS DAILY APPEAL, AUGUST 15, 1870
THE INDIAN MOUND CHICKASAWBA—HUMAN
SKELETONS EIGHT AND TEN FEET IN HEIGHT-
RELICS OF A FORMER AGE
Two miles west of Barfield Point, in Arkansas County, Ark., on the
east bank of the lovely stream called Pemiscott River, stands an Indian
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mound, some 25 feet high and about an acre in area at the top.
This mound is called Chickasawba, and from it the high and
beautiful country surrounding it, some twelve square miles in area
derives its name: Chickasaw. The mound derives its name from
Chickasawba, a chief of the Shawnee tribe, who lived, died, and was
buried there.
STILL ACTIVE AS TRADING MOUND IN 1820
From 1820 to 1831, Chickasawba and his hunters assembled annually
at Barfield Point, then, as now, the principal shipping place of the
surrounding country, and bartered off their furs, peltries, buffalo robes,
and honey to the white settlers and the trading boats on the river, and
receiving in turn powder, shot, lead, blankets, money, etc.
A GIANT EIGHT TO NINE FEET TALL IS
FOUND
A number of years ago in making an excursion into or near the foot of
Chickasawba’s mound, a portion of a gigantic human skeleton was
found. The men who were digging, becoming interested, unearthed the
entire skeleton, and from measurements given to us by reliable parties
the frame of the man to whom it belonged could not have been less
than eight or nine feet in height.
Under the skull, which easily slipped over the head of our informant
(who, we will here state, is one of our best citizens) was found a
peculiarly shaped earthen jar, resembling nothing in the way of Indian
pottery, which had before been seen by them.
It was exactly the shape of the round-bodied, long-necked carafes or
water-decanters, a specimen of which may be seen on Gaston’s table.
EXQUISITE HIEROGLYPHS FOUND ON
FINELY-CARVED VASE
The material of which the vase was made was of a peculiar kind of
clay, and the workmanship was very fine. The belly or body of it was
ornamented with FIGURES OR HIEROGLYPHICS consisting of a
correct delineation of human hands, parallel to each other, open, palms
outward, and running up and down the vase, the wrists to the base, the
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fingers towards the neck. On either side of the hands, were tibia or
thigh bones, also correctly delineated, running around the base.
MORE SKULL, MORE VASES UNDER THEIR
HEADS
Since that time, whenever an excavation has been made in
Chickasawba country in the neighborhood of the mound SIMILAR
SKELETONS have been found and under the skull of every one were
found similar funeral vases, almost exactly like the one described.
There are now in the city several of the vases and portions of the huge
skeletons. One of the editors of The Appeal yesterday measured a
thighbone, which is fully three feet long.
The thigh and shin bones, together with the bones of the foot, stood
up in proper position in a physician’s office in this city, measure five
feet in height, and show the body to which the leg belonged to have
been from nine to ten feet in height. At Beaufort’s Landing, near
Barfield, in digging a deep ditch, a skeleton was dug up, the leg of
which measured from five to six feet in length and other bones in
proportion.
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THREE
Pre-Columbian Foreign Contact
254
9
HOLY STONES, A CALENDAR STELE, AND
FOREIGN COINS
As we have seen, there is compelling evidence that America’s giants
belonged to sophisticated indigenous cultures. Along with that there are
strong indications of very ancient cultural exchanges with other parts of
the world. In this chapter I review reports related to tablets carved with
inscriptions, a calendar stele, and ancient foreign coins.
GEORGE S. MCDOWELL REVEALS HIEROGLYPHIC
TABLETS IN THE POSSESSION OF THE CINCINNATI
SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY
One of the most extraordinary documents I have run across in my
research is a newspaper article published in 1891, which goes into a
detailed description and translation of tablets in the possession of a
historical society’s museum in Cincinnati, textiles matching those in
Assyria, evidence of surgery, and so forth. The author was a respected
writer, and the article was widely syndicated nationally in 1891.
RARE TREASURES CONTAINED IN THE
MUSEUM OF THE CINCINNATI SOCIETY OF
NATURAL HISTORY
BY GEORGE S. MCDOWELL
_ CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, JULY 15, 1891 _
FURTHER EXPLORATIONS NOW IN
PROGRESS IN OHIO
Continued explorations among the ancient monuments remaining in the
Ohio valley maintain the general interest in those people whose
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existence was before the time of written history, whose relations to the
rest of mankind have never been discovered, and who are distinguished
simply as mound builders; that is, they are known only as the authors of
the most enduring of the monuments that survive them: those great
piles of earth, whether raised for sacrifice, sepulture, or war.
The museum of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History is filled
with a wealth of these curious peoples, in many cases inexplicable
antiquities, and the explorations, which are in progress among the
mounds and forts of the Little Miami Valley, under the direction of Dr.
Metz, of Madisonville, Ohio, are almost every day bringing to light
additions to the remarkable collection, which is equaled only by the one
at the Peabody Museum, that was filled and still supplied by the same
sources.
A study of these shows that the mound builders were an agricultural
people, industrious in the arts of peace as well as the precautions of
war, with considerable educational and scientific attainments, and that
they had rites and ceremonies of religion and burial as distinctive as
any that characterize the people of the present day.
ROWS AND ROWS OF GRINNING SKULLS
Illustrative of the physical characteristics of the people, the Cincinnati
Museum has a number of skeletons taken from the mounds around the
city and the newly-excavated cemetery near Madisonville, and there are
rows upon rows of grinning skulls from which the learned members of
the society have drawn many lessons touching on the mental
qualifications of these ancient people.
They have determined that the shape and the phrenological points
preclude the possibility to their having belonged to any Indians of
whom our histories furnish us information.
There is also in the rooms of the society a piece of woven cloth taken
from one of the mounds, in this case found lying close to a skeleton that
occupied almost the center and bottom of the mound (so that it must
have been placed there with the corpse) that in texture is almost
identical with cloth found among the ruins of ancient Babylon and
Assyria and the farther east.
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Fig. 9.1. Cincinnati tablet. Sometimes referred to as the great American Rosetta
stone, the Cincinnati tablet was discovered in the Old Mound at the corner of Fifth
and Mound Streets in Cincinnati in 1841. At first declared a fraud, it was later
shown to be authentic. Some have speculated that it is a stylized representation
of the Tree of Life. (Illustration from Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley
by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis.)
THE SENSATIONAL CINCINNATI TABLET
Similar to the textile in its ancient connections to advanced civilization,
are two other relics in the possession of the Society—one known as the
“Conjuring Stone” and the other as the “Tablet of Life” or more
commonly the “Cincinnati Tablet” because it was taken from one of the
mounds marking the site of the city—the former a mathematical, the
other a psychological witness.
The tablet is a remarkable and curious stone. Two others of similar
hieroglyphical decoration, but plainly of less advanced philosophical
idea, according to the learned men who examined them have been
found in Ohio mounds, one near Wilmington and the other near
Waverly.
And not only does the Cincinnati Tablet exhibit a more advanced
idea, it is also of superior workmanship and preservation. An
examination of the drawing of the Cincinnati Tablet will discover upon
it several fetal designs that have been interpreted as symbolical of those
gestative and procreative mysteries that must have powerfully affected
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the minds of man in the remotest early ages. The design of the tablet
shows that its author had knowledge of the stages of development at
various periods of fetal growth, and the tablet, bearing these
symbolizations of the existence before life, was no doubt used in
connection with the ceremonies of sepulture and possibly by way of
comparative conjecture concerning the hidden things of life beyond the
grave.
THE MEASURING STONE
Regarding the next in importance to the “Tablet,” is the “Measuring
Stone.” This is a piece of sandstone, about exactly nine inches on the
flat side and twelve inches on the curve, the dotted lines in the drawing
indicating the completed ellipse, which is an exact model of the mound
in which it was found.
Learned mathematical analysis shows this stone to have been the
basis for all measurements of the great mounds and earthworks in the
Ohio Valley, and that the same numbers 9 and 12 are the key numbers
of the measures used in the construction of the architectural works of
the Chaldeans, Babylonians, pre-Semites, and Egyptians, while the
latter number remains to this day the English standard.
EVIDENCE OF BRAIN SURGERY
The skull taken from an excavation near Cincinnati shows that these
people were well-versed in surgery. It is the skull of a man who had
once received a terrible blow to the side of the head, which crushed the
skull, but after careful treatment recovered from the effects of the blow.
Dr. Langdon, an eminent surgeon of Cincinnati, examined the skull and
said that the adjustments to the parts of bone and the way in which they
had healed show knowledge of practical surgery scarcely excelled at
the present day.
FORGES, POLISHING BONES, AND IRON
The relics in the Museum of the Cincinnati Society show also that these
people were well-versed in the industrial arts, there being the remains
of hammers, knives, mica ornaments, beads, wampum, decorated
shells, pottery, and many other things. Among these are some that have
puzzled the scientists to determine to what uses they have been applied
such as a certain leg bone.
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It is a femur almost worn in two by some friction, as though it must
have been used for polishing. Thousands of pieces of these bones have
been found, having been so worn away that they broke in use.
There is also a kind of needle, made from long fish bones resembling
in length the present crocheting needle and the carpet needle in
construction. They may have been used in the making of clothing.
There are found the remains of forges, and great quantities of furnace
slag and cinders and scaling like those that fly from beaten white-hot
iron.
HIEROGLYPHICS ALSO FOUND IN MARIETTA
It may be that one of the tablets with “similar hieroglyphical
decoration” referred to by McDowell in 1891 is the one described
below as part of the findings of an elaborate giant burial in Muskingum
County, Ohio.
REMAINS OF NINE-FOOT GIANTS IN OHIO
CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, JULY 14, 1880
(SEE MARION DAILY STAR, JULY 14, 1880, FOR ORIGINAL
STORY)
The mound in which these remarkable discoveries were made was
about sixty-four feet long and thirty-five feet wide top measurement
and gently sloped down to the hill where it was situated. A number of
stumps of trees were found on the slope standing in two rows, and on
the top of the mound were an oak and a hickory stump, all of which
bore marks of great age.
All of the skeletons were found on a level with the hill, and about
eight feet from the top of the mound. In one grave there were two
skeletons, one male and one female. The female face was looking
downward, the male being immediately on top, with the face looking
upward. The male skeleton measured nine feet in length, and the female
was eight.
The male frame in this case was nine feet, four inches in length and
the female was eight feet.
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In another grave was found a female skeleton, which was encased in
a clay coffin, holding in her arms the skeleton of a child three and a
half feet long, by the side of which was an image, which being exposed
to the atmosphere, crumbled rapidly.
The remaining seven, were found in single graves and were lying on
their sides. The smallest of the seven was nine feet in length and the
largest ten. One single circumstance connected with this discovery was
the fact that not a single tooth was found in either mouth except in the
one encased in the clay coffin.
On the south end of the mound was erected a stone altar, four and a
half feet wide and twelve feet long, built on an earthen foundation
nearly four feet wide, having in the middle two large flagstones, from
which sacrifices were undoubtedly made, for upon them were found
charred bones, cinders, and ashes. This was covered by about three feet
of earth.
AN ANCIENT TABLET WITH POSSIBLE
HIEROGLYPHS
What is now a profound mystery may in time became the key to unlock
still further mysteries that were centuries ago commonplace affairs.
I refer to a stone that was found resting against the head of the clay
coffin above described. It is irregularly shaped red sandstone, weighing
about 18 pounds, being strongly impregnated with oxide of iron, and
bearing upon one side TWO LINES OF HIEROGLYPHS.
HOLY STONES IN OHIO AND ILLINOIS?
Other ancient engraved tablets found in Ohio and Illinois deepen the
mystery.
IS IT REALLY THE TEN COMMANDMENTS?
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY WEB ARCHIVE
In November of 1860, David Wyrick of Newark, Ohio, found an
inscribed stone in a burial mound about ten miles south of Newark. The
stone is inscribed on all sides with a condensed version of the Ten
Commandments or Decalogue, in a peculiar form of post- Exilic square
260
Hebrew letters. The robed and bearded figure on the front is identified
as Moses in letters fanning over his head.
The inscription is carved into a fine-grained black stone. It has been
identified by geologists Ken Bork and Dave Hawkins of Denison
University as limestone; a fossil crinoid stem is visible on the surface,
and the stone reacts strongly to HC1. It is definitely not black alabaster
or gypsum as previously reported here. According to James L. Murphy
of Ohio State University, “Large white crinoid stems are common in
the Upper Mercer and Boggs limestone units in Muskingum Co. and
elsewhere, and these limestones are often very dark gray to black in
color. You could find such rock at the Forks of the Muskingum at
Zanesville, though the Upper Mercer limestones do not outcrop much
further up the Licking.” We therefore need not look any farther than the
next county over to find a potential source for the stone, contrary to the
previous assertion here that such limestone is not common in Ohio. The
inscribed stone was found inside a sandstone box, smooth on the
outside and hollowed out within to exactly hold the stone. The
Decalogue inscription begins at the non-alphabetic symbol at the top of
the front, runs down the left side of the front, around every available
space on the back and sides, and then back up the right side of the front
to end where it begins, as though it were to be read repetitively.
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Fig. 9.2. The Newark “holy stone” (courtesy of J. Huston McCulloch)
David Deal and James Trimm note that the Decalogue stone fits well
into the hand, and that the lettering is somewhat worn precisely where
the stone would be in contact with the last three fingers and the palm if
held in the left hand. Furthermore, the otherwise puzzling handle at the
bottom could be used to secure the stone to the left arm with a strap.
They conclude that the Decalogue stone was a Jewish arm phylactery
or tefilla (also written t’filla) of the Second Temple period. Although
the common Jewish tefilla does not contain the words of the
Decalogue, Moshe Shamah reports that the Qumran sect did include the
Decalogue.
THE KEYSTONE ALSO FOUND AT NEWARK
MOUNDS
Several months earlier, in June of 1860, David Wyrick had found an
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additional stone, also inscribed in Hebrew letters. This stone is
popularly known as the “Keystone” because of its general shape.
However, it is too rounded to have actually served as a keystone. It was
apparently intended to be held with the knob in the right hand, and
turned to read the four sides in succession, perhaps repetitively. It
might also have been suspended by the knob for some purpose.
Although it is not pointed enough to have been a plumb bob, it could
have served as a pendulum.
The material of the Keystone has been identified, probably by
geologist Charles Whittlesey, immediately after its discovery as
novaculite, a very hard fine-grained siliceous rock used for whetstones.
[For more on Whittlesey, see “Ancient Copper Mining in the Great
Lakes.” .1 The inscriptions on the four sides read:
Fig. 9.3. The Keystone (courtesy of J. Huston McCulloch)
• Qedosh Qedoshim, "Holy of Holies"
• Melek Eretz, "King of the Earth"
• Torath YHWH, "The Law of God"
• Devor YHWH, "The Word of God"
Wyrick found the Keystone within what is now a developed section
of Newark, at the bottom of a pit adjacent to the extensive ancient
Hopewellian earthworks there (circa 100 BC-AD 500). Although the
pit was surely ancient, and the stone was covered with 12-14 inches of
earth, it is impossible to say when the stone fell into the pit. It is,
therefore, not inconceivable that the Keystone is genuine but somehow
modern.
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The letters on the Keystone are nearly standard Hebrew rather than
the very peculiar alphabet of the Decalogue stone. These letters were
already developed at the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ca. 200-100
BC), and so are broadly consistent with any time frame from the
Hopewellian era to the present. For the past 1000 years or so, Hebrew
has most commonly been written with vowel points and consonant
points that are missing on both the Decalogue and Keystone. The
absence of points is therefore suggestive, but not conclusive, of an
earlier date.
Note that in the Keystone inscription, “Melek Eretz,” the aleph and
mem have been stretched so as to make the text fit the available space.
Such dilation does occasionally appear in Hebrew manuscripts of the
first millennium AD. Birnbaum, The Hebrew Scripts, vol. I, pp. 173-4,
notes that “We do not know when dilation originated. It is absent in the
manuscripts from Qumran. . . . The earliest specimens in this book are .
. . middle of the seventh century [AD]. Thus we might tentatively
suggest the second half of the sixth century or the first half of the
seventh century as the possible period when dilation first began to be
employed.” Dilation would not have appeared in the printed sources
nineteenth-century Ohioans would primarily have had access to.
The Hebrew letter shin is most commonly made with a V-shaped
bottom. The less common flat-bottomed form that appears on the first
side of the Keystone may provide some clue as to its origin. The exact
wording of the four inscriptions may provide additional clues.
Today, both the Decalogue Stone and Keystone, or “Newark Holy
Stones,” as they are known, are on display in the Johnson-
Humrickhouse Museum in Roscoe Village, 300 Whitewoman St.,
Coshockton, Ohio.
THE WILSON MOUND STONES
One year after Wyrick’s death in 1864, two additional Hebrew-
inscribed stones were found during the excavation of a mound on the
George A. Wilson farm east of Newark. These stones have been lost,
but a drawing of the one and a photograph of the other are reproduced
in Alrutz.
The two stones from the Wilson farm, known as the “Inscribed
Head” and the “Cooper Stone” at first caused considerable excitement.
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Shortly afterwards, however, a local dentist named John H. Nicol
claimed to have carved the stones and to have introduced them into the
excavation, with the intention of discrediting the two earlier stones
found by Wyrick.
The inscription on the Inscribed Head can be read in Hebrew letters
as J-H-NCL.In Hebrew, short vowels are not represented by letters, so
this is precisely how one would write J-H-NiCoL.
The Cooper stone is less clear, but appears to have a similar
inscription. The inscriptions themselves therefore confirm Nicol’s
claim to have planted these two stones. Nicol was largely successful in
his attempt to discredit the Wyrick stones, and they quickly became a
textbook example of a “well-known” hoax. It was only with Alrutz’s
thorough 1980 article— that interest in them was revived.
Although the Decalogue is of an entirely different character than
either of the Wilson Mound stones, it is disturbing that Nicol was
standing near Wyrick at the time of its discovery.
THE JOHNSON-BRADNER STONE
Two years later, in 1867, David M. Johnson, a banker who co-founded
the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, in conjunction with Dr. N. Roe
Bradner, M.D., of Pennsylvania, found a fifth stone, in the same mound
group south of Newark in which Wyrick had located the Decalogue.
The original of this small stone is now lost, but a lithograph, published
in France, survives.
The letters on the lid and base of the Johnson-Bradner stone are in
the same peculiar alphabet as the Decalogue inscription, and appear to
wrap around in the same manner as on the Decalogue’s back platform.
However, the lithograph is not clear enough for me to attempt a
transcription with any confidence. However, Dr. James Trimm, whose
Ph.D. is in Semitic Languages, has recently reported that the base and
lid contain fragments of the Decalogue text. The independent
discovery, in a related context, by reputable citizens, of a third stone
bearing the same unique characters as the Decalogue stone, strongly
confirms the authenticity and context of the Decalogue Stone, as well
as Wyrick’s reliability.
265
Fig. 9.4. Ancient Works at Newark. This map was published in thel866 Newark
County Atlas.
266
Fig. 9.5. These skeletons found in a recent excavation in Germany are from the
Neolithic Period and are typical of the multiple burials found in many of America’s
Indian mounds (courtesy of Arthur W. McGrath).
inscription dz. Newark
Fig. 9.6. Lithograph by Nancy J. Royer, Congres International des Amerlcanistes
(courtesy of J. Huston McCulloch)
Mr. Myron Paine of Martinez, Calif., has cogently noted that the
Johnson-Bradner stone, if bound in a strap so as to be held as a frontlet
between the eyes, would serve well as a head phylactery, while the
Decalogue stone was being used as an arm phylactery per the Deal-
Trimm hypothesis noted in the first section above.
THE MYSTERIOUS STONE BOWL
267
A stone bowl was also found with the Decalogue, by one of the persons
accompanying Wyrick. By Wyrick’s account, it was of the capacity of
a teacup, and of the same material as the box. Wyrick believed both the
box and the cup had once been bronzed (Alrutz, pp. 21-2), though this
has not been confirmed. The bowl was long neglected, but was found
recently in the storage rooms of the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum
by Dr. Bradley Lepper of the Ohio Historical Society. It is now on
display along with the Decalogue stone and Keystone. (Photo courtesy
of Jeffrey A. Heck, Najor Productions, njor@tcon.net T
An interview in the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of Biblical Archaeology
Review (“The Enigma of Qumran,” pp. 24ff.) sheds light on the
possible significance of the stone bowl. The interviewer, Hershel
Shanks, asked how we would know that Qumran, the settlement
adjacent to the caves in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, was
Jewish, if there had been no scrolls. The four archaeologists
interviewed gave several reasons: the presence of ritual baths,
numerous Hebrew-inscribed potsherds, and its location in Judea, close
to Jerusalem. Then Hanan Eshel, senior lecturer in archaeology at
Hebrew University and Bar-Ilan University, gave a fourth reason.
Fig. 9.7. The Decalogue stone, the Keystone, and the ritual cleansing bowl (photo
by Jeffrey A. Heck)
ESHEL: We also have a lot of stone vessels.
SHANKS: Why is that significant?
ESHEL: Stone vessels are typical of Jews who kept the purity laws.
Stone vessels do not become impure.
268
SHANKS: Why?
ESHEL: Because that is what the Pharisaic law decided. Stone
doesn’t have the nature of a vessel, and therefore it is always pure.
SHANKS: Is that because you don’t do anything to transform the
material out of which it is made, in contrast to, say, a clay pot, whose
composition is changed by firing?
ESHEL: Yes. Probably. Stone is natural. You don’t have to put it in
an oven or anything like that. Purity was very important to the Jews in
the Late Second Temple period.
In an article in a subsequent issue of BAR, Yitzhak Magen goes on to
explain that in the late Second Temple period, the Pharisees ordained
that observant Jews should ritually rinse their hands with pure water
before eating, and that in order to be pure, the water had to come from a
pure vessel. Pottery might be impure, but stone was always pure. The
result was a brief “Israeli Stone Age,” during which there flourished an
industry of making stone teacups to pour the water from and stone jugs
to store it in. After the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70, this
practice quickly disappeared.
The stone bowl therefore fits right in with the Decalogue Stone as an
appropriate ritual object. It is highly doubtful that Wyrick, Nicol,
McCarty, or anyone else in Newark in 1860 would have been aware of
this arcane Second Temple era convention.
Perhaps the stone box is another manifestation of the same “Stone
Age” imperative: The easy way to make a box to hold an important
object (or a prank) is out of wood. Carving it from stone is
unnecessarily difficult, and would be justified only if stone were
regarded as being significant in itself. According to Wyrick the bowl
and box were made of the same sandstone.
Two unusual “eight-square plumb bobs” were also found with the
Decalogue. Their location is unknown, though they might also turn up
in the Museum’s collections.
HUNTERS FIND STONE TABLETS UNDER A TREE
SMITHSONIAN INVOLVED IN ILLINOIS
269
TABLET FIND
A REMARKABLE FIND ON THE PRAIRIES OF
ILLINOIS: QUAINT LETTERING, INDIAN
RELICS, AND THE MOUND BUILDERS
_ CHICAGO TRIBUNE, AUGUST 10, 1892 _
A remarkable discovery was recently made on the virgin field a few
miles from LaHarpe, in the historic old county of Hancock, in Illinois.
Wyman Huston and Daniel Lovitt were chasing a ground squirrel on
the farm of Huston, when the dog trailed the squirrel to its hole under
an old dead tree stump, which was easily pushed over by one of the
men. In grabbing for the squirrel, the old stump was taken out, and
under its roots were found two sandstone tablets, about 10 x 11 inches,
and from one-fourth to half-an-inch in thickness.
The tablets lay one upon the other, and the sides that faced contained
strange inscriptions in Roman-like capital letters that had been cut into
the stone with some sharp instrument. The men brought the tablets to
LaHarpe, where they were inspected by several antiquarians but none
of them could decipher the inscriptions. Mr. Huston allowed the stones
to be forwarded to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., where they are
to be held for scientific investigation.
SMITHSONIAN BAFFLED BY INSCRIPTIONS
The authorities of the Smithsonian Institution state that the find is a
remarkable one, and that they hope to throw some light upon the
meaning of the lettering etched upon the tablets. But, so far, however,
they have been unable to do so, or at least they have not announced the
result of any discoveries, they may have made in the matter.
THE DAVENPORT STELE
When the Davenport Stele is added to the mix, things get even stranger.
The stele was found in an Indian mound in 1877, and according to
Harvard Professor Barry Fell, the stele contains writing in Egyptian,
Iberian-Punic, and Libyan. The Smithsonian, of course, says it and
others like it are fakes.
270
SMITHSONIAN INVOLVED IN STRANGE
ANCIENT IOWA TABLET “HOAX” WITH
AMERICA B.C.’S BARRY FELL
BY OTTO KNAUTH
_ DES MOINES REGISTER, FEBRUARY 20, 1977 _
“Egyptian and Libyan explorers sailed np the Mississippi River 2,500
years ago and left a tablet where Davenport now stands,” a Harvard
Professor said. “That’s absurd,” countered a former Iowa state
archeologist, who says the Professor is perpetuating a 100-year-old
hoax. Harvard’s Dr. Barry Fell, a marine biologist by profession and an
epigraphist by avocation, said he had deciphered the front and back of a
table that was found in an Indian mound in 1877. “The tablet,” he
stated, “contains writing not only in Egyptian hieroglyphics but also in
Iberian-Punic and Libyan.”
He likened it in importance to the famed Rosetta Stone, which,
because it said the same thing in three languages, enabled scientists to
decipher hieroglyphics.
“It is unquestionably genuine,” he stated.
“Not so,” said University of Iowa archeologist Marshall McKusick.
“The tablet is part of ‘one of the most thoroughly documented hoaxes
in American archeology.’ Members of the old Davenport Academy of
Science inscribed the tablets and buried them in a mound on the old
Cook farm, knowing the tablets would be found by a member they
wanted to ridicule,” McKusick says.
But the hoax got out of hand when the Smithsonian Institution got
involved and the discovery of the tablets received national publicity.
McKusick documented the hoax in a 1970 book. The Davenport
Conspiracy.
“That all may well be true,” Fell said in a recent telephone interview,
“and two of the three tablets in the mound probably are fake. But the
third, which he refers to as the Davenport Calendar Stele, definitely is
not.” This stele with the spring equinox scene on is described in Barry
Fell’s book, America B.C., as “one of the most important ever
discovered. It is used in the ceremonial erection of a New Year pillar
271
made of bundles of reeds called ‘Djed,’” Fell said.
“Writing in the curving lines above says the same thing in Iberian
and Libyan. The Egyptian hieroglyphics along the top explain how to
use the stone.
“Two Indian pipes carved in the shape of elephants found in the
mound also are genuine,” Fell says.
BARRY FELL PUBLISHES CONTROVERSIAL
AMERICA B.C.
Fell’s account of deciphering the tablet and the implications of its
message are contained in his book just published, America B.C.:
Ancient Settlers in the New World. The book deals with a wide variety
of finds, particularly in New England, but also ranging as far west as
Oklahoma, which Fell contends prove that ancient Egyptians, Fibyans,
Celts, and other people were able to reach America and settle here well
before the birth of Christ. Portions of the book are reprinted in the
February issue of Reader's Digest. “The Davenport stele,” Fell writes,
“is the only one on which occurs a trilingual text in the Egyptian,
Iberian-Punic, and Fibyan languages.
“This stele, long condemned as a meaningless forgery, is in fact one
of the most important steles ever discovered,” he writes.
“One side of the tablet—since its discovery it has separated by
cleavage so that each face is now separate—depicts the celebration of
the Djed Festival of Osiris at the time of the Spring equinox (Mar. 21),”
Fell says. The other side contains the corresponding fall hunting
festival at the time of the autumnal equinox (Sept. 21). The writing runs
along the top of the spring tablet. “The Iberian and Fibyan texts,” Fell
says, “both say the same thing—that the stone carries an inscription
giving the secret of regulating the calendar.” This “secret” is given in
the Egyptian text of hieroglyphics.
“This Egyptian text,” Fell says, “may be rendered in English as
follows”:
To a pillar attach a mirror in such a manner that when the sun
rises on New Year’s Day it will cast a reflection onto the stone
called the Watcher. New Year’s Day occurs when the sun is in
conduction with the zodiacal constellation Aries, in the House of
272
the Ram, the balance of night and day being about to reverse. At
this time (the spring equinox) hold the Festival of the New Year
and the Religious Rite of the New Year.
“This festival,” Fell says, “consists in the ceremonial erection of a
special New Year pillar made of bundles of reeds called a “djed.” The
tablet, shows long lines of worshippers pulling on ropes with the pillar
in the center.”
HOW DID ANCIENT HIEROGLYPHS GET TO
IOWA?
“How did this extraordinary document come to be in a mound burial in
Iowa?” Fell asks. “Is it genuine?
“Certainly it is genuine,” he says, “for neither the Libyan nor the
Iberian scripts had been deciphered at the time Gass [Rev. Jacob Gass]
found the stone. The Libyan and Iberian texts are consistent with each
other and with the hieroglyphic text.
“As to how it came to be in Iowa, some speculations may be made.
The stele appears to be of local American manufacture, perhaps made
by a Libyan or an Iberian astronomer who copied as an older model
brought from Egypt or more likely from Libya, hence probably brought
on a Libyan ship.
“The Priest of Osiris may have issued the stone originally as a means
of regulating the calendar in far distant lands. The date is unlikely to be
earlier than about 800 B.C., for we do not know of Iberian or Libyan
inscriptions earlier than that date,” Fell writes.
“The explorers presumably sailed up the Mississippi River and
colonized in the Davenport area,” he says, and he hazards a guess that
they came on ships commanded by a Libyan skipper of the Egyptian
navy, during the Twenty-second, or Libyan, Dynasty, a period of
overseas exploration. “An Egyptian astronomer-priest probably came
with the explorers,” he speculates, “and it was he or his successors who
engraved the stone.
“The hunting scene tablet is engraved in Micmac script and is the
work of an Algonquian Indian of about 2,000 years ago,” Fell says. He
does not explain the discrepancy in time, but goes on to say that the
Algonquian culture shows evidence of contact with early Egyptians.
273
The approximate translation is:
Hunting of beasts and their young, waterfowl and fishes. The herds
of the Lord and their young, the beasts of the Lord.
“It is the earliest known example of Micmac script,” Fell says. Fell
makes no mention in his book of McKusick’s account of the Davenport
fraud but this is not because he was not aware of it.
AVOIDING OLD DISPUTES
“I just felt it was kinder not to mention it,” he said recently. “It was my
desire to avoid raking up old disputes. Who cares whether somebody
defrauded somebody else a hundred years ago? I attach no importance
to those things.”
NINETY-FIVE-PERCENT OF “FRAUDS” TURN
OUT TO BE TRUE
The Smithsonian, which was the first to declare the tablets fraudulent,
had no experts in ancient languages. “Only those who thought they
were,” Fell said.
“And McKusick himself makes no claim to being a linguist,” he
says. Fell said he has been investigating similar archeological finds that
had been labeled frauds, “and we find that 95 per cent of them are
genuine.
“There is a tendency on the part of those established in a field of
science either to ignore or label as fraud anything that does not fit in
with their pre-conceived notion of how things should be,” he said.
“It is much easier to cry fraud at something out of the ordinary than
to investigate it,” he said. “Americans are throwing away 2,000 years
of their history that way.”
Fell concedes he has never been in Iowa and was not allowed to see
the tablet, which is now in possession of the Putnam Museum in
Davenport. He says he did his deciphering from photographs, which is
the usual way epigraphists do their work. McKusick has taken up the
challenge by writing a report to Science, the weekly publication of the
prestigious American Academy for the Advancement of Science. He
said the Davenport frauds were first exposed in Science in the 1880s
274
and later reviewed in 1970. McKusick pointed out that the slate for one
of the tablets (not Fell’s Davenport stele) came from a wall of the Old
Slate House, a notorious early-day house of ill fame. “The third tablet,
a piece of limestone with a tablet, is engraved on a piece of slate,” said
University of Iowa Archeologist Marshall McKusick.
In 1970 McKusick wrote a book about the Davenport Conspiracy
that surrounded the finding of the tablets in an Indian mound in 1877.
“Holes diameter and were used to hang the slate,” McKusick says. Fell
concedes this tablet may well have a fake figure of an Indian on it and
came from Schmidt’s Quarry, not far from the place where the tablets
were found. The farm site now is occupied by the Thompson-Hayward
Chemical Co., 2040 West River Drive.
“A dictionary and almanacs provided inspiration for the writing on
the tablets,” he said. “A janitor at the Academy admitted carving
various Indian pipes, which also were found in the mound,” McKusick
said. “They were soaked in grease or rubbed with shoe black to make
them look old.” Two members of the academy were expelled in the
ruckus that followed the claims of fraud but a curious sidelight to the
controversy lies in the fact that none of the participants ever admitted in
writing that they actually forged the tablets. All were under threat of
libel at the time. The closest thing to a confession in McKusick’s book
is a statement by Judge James Bellinger made in 1947 to a Mr. Irving
Hurlbut. In it, Bellinger tells of copying hieroglyphics out of old
almanacs on slate he tore off the wall of the Old Slate House.
The story becomes suspect, however, when McKusick points out that
Bellinger was only 9 years old at the time the tablets were found.
“Whatever the judge may have said, he was nowhere near the scene of
the events he so vividly describes,” McKusick wrote.
“GULLIBLE PUBLIC”
In his report to Science McKusick says of the Fell book: “It is an
unfortunate imposition upon a gullible public to have the Davenport
frauds accepted as genuine and used to explain Egyptian explorations
up the Mississippi 3,000 years ago.
“Fell, as a ‘Harvard scholar,’ has a scholarly responsibility to know
the professional literature on subjects he is publishing theories about.
His book, America B.C., is irresponsible amateurism and is
275
unfortunately but one example of a genre of speculation that is growing
and sells well to the public.”
“Modern technology may provide the means for resolving the issue
of whether one or all of the tablets are fake,” says Dr. Duane Anderson,
who succeeded McKusick as state archeologist. “If the tablets could be
submitted to a rigorous microscopic examination, it might be possible
to determine that the writing is older than a mere 100 years,” Anderson
said. “Rock ages, and often a patina, or microscopic crust, develops on
the surface. It might also be possible to detect traces of modern steel if
the incisions were made with modern instruments,” he said. Anderson
continued, “But they might at least be able to reveal if the writing was
done before 1877.”
Anyone wishing to make such an examination will have to secure the
cooperation of the Putnam Museum, which is the present custodian of
the tablets. Museum Director Joseph Cartwright has steadfastly refused
access to the tablets, saying they have “been removed from the museum
collection.
“We are not anxious to dig up the whole controversy again,” he said
in a recent telephone interview. “It is not in the museum’s interest to
make them available. This is something the museum is not interested
in.” Asked if it might not be interesting for the public to put the tablets
on display in view of the present renewal of the controversy,
Cartwright replied, “It is our prerogative to decide, not yours.”
HIEROGLYPHIC TABLETS IN MICHIGAN AND KENTUCKY
Evidence of writing and hieroglyphs has been found all over the
country, attesting to widespread trade and wide-ranging cultural
influences. Many examples have been found in Michigan, including the
controversial Michigan tablets, which number in the thousands. Many
more finds of writing have been discovered across the country,
although many, like the Ten Commandments from Ohio and the
Michigan and Illinois tablets, are still under hot dispute. Here are two
finds from Michigan and Kentucky that appear genuine.
ANCIENT HIEROGLYPHICS AND WRITING
ON A TABLET
276
DETROIT FREE PRESS, JUNE 14, 1894
The mounds on the south side of Crystal Lake, in Montcalm County,
Michigan, have been opened and a prehistoric race unearthed. One
contained five skeletons and the other three. In the first mound was an
earthen tablet five inches long, four wide, and half as much thick. It
was divided into four corners. On one of them were inscribed queer
characters. The skeletons were arranged in the same relative positions,
so far as the record is concerned.
In the other mound, there was a casket of earthen ware ten and one
half inches long and three and a half inches wide. The cover bore
various inscriptions. The characters found upon the tablet were also
prominent on the casket. Upon opening the casket, a copper coin was
revealed, together with several stone types, with which the inscriptions
or casket had evidentially been made. There were also two pipes—one
of stone, the other of pottery and apparently of the same material as the
casket.
STRANGE ANCIENT WELSH MESSAGE
WRITTEN ON A STONE?
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANCIENT KENTUCKY HISTORICAL
_ SOCIETY, FEBRUARY 11, 1880 _
Craig Crecelius made a curious discovery in 1912, while plowing his
field in Meade County, Kentucky. He had unearthed a limestone slab
that had strange symbols chiseled onto the rock face. Knowing that he
had made an important historical find, he sought information about the
origins of the stone from the academics.
For over 50 years, Crecelius inquired of anyone with academic
credentials about the significance of the carved symbols. Typical of the
comments he received from the “experts” were like what one geologist
in 1973 remarked that the rock was “geologic in origin” and “not an
artifact.” An archaeologist has said that the carvings were grooves
created by shifting limestone pressures.
Disheartened and tired of being made fun of by the locals, Crecelius
finally gave up his quest for finding out the rock’s secrets. In the
midl960s, he allowed Jon Whitfield, a former trustee of the Meade
277
County, Kentucky, Library, to display the stone in the Brandenburg
Library. This could very well have been the end of the story, had it not
been for the observant Mr. Whitfield.
Whitfield attended a meeting of the Ancient Kentucky Historical
Society (AKHS) and saw slides of other, similar-looking carved stones.
He learned that the carvings were a script called Coelbren, used by the
ancient Welsh. Whitfield was informed that similar stones had been
widely found across the south-central part of the U.S. Pictures made of
the Brandenburg Stone were submitted to two Welsh historians helping
the AKHS in deciphering the scripts.
Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett, specialists in the study of the
Coelbren script in Wales, immediately were able to read the script. The
translation is intriguing; it appears that the stone may possibly have
been a property or boundary marker: “Toward strength, divide the land
we are spread over, purely between offspring in wisdom.”
Wilson and Blackett place a connotation of the promotion of unity
with the phrase “Toward strength” and a connotation of justice with the
word “purely.” The stone was on public display from 1999-2000 at the
Falls of the Ohio State Park Interpretive Center in Clarksville, Indiana.
The display has since been moved to the Charlestown Public Library,
Clark County, Indiana.
ANCIENT COINS FOUND IN AMERICA
Scattered reports of ancient coins found buried around the country are
usually dismissed as fraudulent by traditional archaeologists, but in the
collection of stories that follow, one outlines a circumstance where the
difficulty of creating a hoax belies that idea, while others tell of quite
recent finds that have been authenticated by ancient coin experts.
The following first-person account of the discovery of two ancient
coins is very instructive. The coins were found underneath the roots of
a beech tree that had been blown up in order to clear a field. This is not
something that could be done as a prank, as the entire operation would
have been costly and pointless in the extreme.
The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, 1823
By Dr. John Haywood
278
A Copper Medal of King Richard III Found
Between the years of 1802 and 1809, in the state of Kentucky,
Jefferson County, on Big Grass Creek, which runs into the Ohio
River at Louisville, at the upper end of the falls, about ten miles
above the mouth, near Middleton, Mr. Spear found under the roots
of a beech tree, which had been blown up, two pieces of copper
coin of the size of our old copper pence. On one side was
represented an eagle with three heads united to one neck. The
sovereign princes of Greece wore on their scepters the figure of a
bird and often that of an eagle. Possibly this may have been a coin
uttered in the time of the three Roman emperors.
Lately, a Cherokee Indian delivered to Mr. Dwyer, in the year
1822, who delivered to Mr. Earle, a copper medal, nearly or quite
the size of a dollar. All around it, on both sides was a raised rim.
On the one side is the robust figure of a man, apparently of the age
of 40, with a crown upon his head, buttons upon his coat, and a
garment flowing from a knot on his shoulder, toward and over the
lower part of his breast, his hair short and curled; his face full; his
nose aquiline, very prominent and long, the tip descending very
considerably below the nostril; his mouth wide; the chin long, and
the lower part very much curved, and projected outwards. Within
the rim, which is on the margin, and just below it in Roman letters,
are the words and figures: “Richardus III. DG. ANG. FR. Et HIB.
Rex.” The letters are none of them at all worn. Both the letters and
figures protuberated from the surface. On the other side is a
monument with a female figure reclined on it, her knees a little
raised, with a crown upon them, and in her left hand a sharp
pointed sword. Underneath the monument are the words: “Coronat
6h Jul, 1483.” And under that line: “Mort 22 Aug. 1485.”
Of Their Coins and Other Metals
About the year 1819, in digging a cellar at Mr. Norris’s, in
Fayetteville, on Elk river, which falls into Tennessee, and about
two hundred yards from a creek, which empties into Elk, and not
far from the ruins of a very ancient fortification on the creek, was
found a small piece of silver coin of the size of a nine-penny piece.
On the one side of this coin is the image of an old man projected
279
considerably from the superficies with a large Roman nose, his
head covered apparently with a cap of curled hair; and on this side
on the edge in old Roman letters, not so neat by far as on our
modern coins, are the words: “Antoninus Aug: Pius. PP. RI. Ill
cos.”
On the other side the projected image of a young man,
apparently 18 or 20 years of age; and on the edge: Juleiius Ceasar.
AL/GP, 111.cos.” It was coined in the third year of the reign of
Antoninus, which was in the year of our Lord 137, and must in a
few years afterwards have been deposited where it was lately
found. The prominent images are not in the least impaired, nor in
any way defaced, nor made dim or dull by rubbing with other
money; neither are the letters on the edges. It must have lain in the
place where lately found, 1500 or 1600 years.
For had it first circulated a century, before it was laid up, the
worn-off parts of the letters and images would be observable. It
was found five feet below the surface. The people living upon Elk
River when it was brought into the country had some production of
art, or of agriculture, for which this coin was brought to the place,
to be exchanged. It could not have been brought by De Soto, for
long before his time it would have been defaced and made smooth
by circulation; and, besides, the crust of the earth would not have
been increased to the depth of five feet in 177 years, the time
elapsed since De Soto passed between the Alabama and the
Tennessee, to the Mississippi.
Irrefutable Proof of Commerce by Sea
This coin furnishes irrefragable proof of one very important fact;
namely, that there was an intercourse, either by sea or by land,
between the ancient inhabitants of Elk River, and the Roman
Empire in the time of Antoninus, or soon afterwards; or between
the ancient Elkites, and some other nation, who had such
intercourse with it. Had a Roman fleet been driven by a storm, in
the time of Antoninus, on the American shores, the crews, even if
they came to land all at the same place, would not have been able
to penetrate to Elk river, nor would any discoverable motive have
engaged them to do so.
280
And again: Roman vessels, the very largest in the Roman fleet of
that day, were not of structure and strength sufficient to have lived
in a storm of such violence and long continuance in the Atlantic
ocean, as was necessary to have driven them from Europe to
America. Nor are storms in such directions and of such
continuance at all usual. Indeed, there is no instance of any such,
which has occurred since the European settlements in America.
The people of Elk in ancient times did probably extend their
commerce down the rivers that Elk communicated with; or if
directly over land to the ocean, they were not impeded by small,
independent tribes between them and the ocean but were part of an
empire extended to it. A thick forest of trees, not more than 6 or 8
years ago, grew upon the surface where the coin was found, many
of which could not be of more recent commencement than 300 or
400 years; a plain proof that the coin was not of Spanish or French
importation.
Besides this coin impressed with the figures of Antoninus and
Aurelius, another was also found in a gully washed by torrents
about two and a half miles from Fayetteville, where the other coin
was found. It was about four feet below the surface. The silver was
very pure, as was also the silver of the other piece; evidently much
more so than the silver coins of the present day.
The letters are rough. Some of them seem worn. On the one side
is the image of a man, in high relief, apparently of the age of 25 or
30. And on the coin, near the edge were these words and letters:
Commodus. The C is defaced, and hardly visible. AVG. HEREL,
on the other side, f E. IMP. III. cos. H. PP. Oa rx. This latter side
also is the figure of a woman, with a hoop in her right hand. She is
seated in a square box; on the inside of which, touching each side,
and resting on the ground, is a wheel. Her left arm, from the
shoulder to the elbow, lies by her side, but from the elbow is raised
a little above the top: and across a small distaff, proceeding from
the hand, is a handle to which is added a trident with the teeth or
prongs parallel to each other. It is supposed that Faustina, the
mother of Commodus, who was defied after her death by her
husband Marcus Aurelius, with the attributes of Venus, Juno, and
Ceres, is represented by this figure.
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The neck of Commodus is bare, with the upper part of his robes
flowing in gatherings from the lower part of the neck. His head
seemed to be covered with a cap of hair curled into many small
knots, with a white fillet around it, near its edges, and the temples
and forehead, with two ends falling some distance from the knot.
Commodus reigned with his father, Marcus Aurelius, from the
time he was 14 or 15 years of age, until the latter died, in the year
of our Lord 180. From that time he reigned alone, until the 31st of
December, 192, when he was put to death.
A HALF-SILVER-DOLLAR-SIZED SCENE OF HOUND AND
DEER
Also from Haywood’s book, here is a separate report from Lincoln,
Tennessee, which is about eleven miles from the Fayetteville site, in
which a silver medallion was discovered with the image of a deer being
chased by a hound engraved on one side. More than thirty-five similar
medallions were plowed up three miles from this site on a farm owned
by a Mr. Oliver Williams.
The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, 1823
By Dr. John Haywood
Lincoln County, in West Tennessee, is eleven miles from
Fayetteville, where the Roman coin above mentioned was found,
and near to the mouth of Cold water creek, and about 600 yards
distant from the river. The button is about the size of a half dollar
in circumference and is of the intrinsic value of little more than
37.1 cents. The silver is very pure. The button is convex with the
representation of a deer engraved on it and a hound in pursuit. The
eye of the button appears to be as well soldered as though it had
been effected by some of our modern silversmiths.
It was in the spring of 1819 when the first discovery of this
button was made. On the opposite side of the river is an
entrenchment, including a number of mounds. Mr. Oliver Williams
lives within three miles of this place and says that during the year
1819 one dozen of the like buttons were ploughed up; and that for
every year since, more or fewer of them have been found; the
whole amounting to about three dozen. Upon all of them the device
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is that above stated. These buttons have been found promiscuously,
at the depth to which the plough generally penetrates into the earth,
or from 9 to 12 inches. The field in which the buttons were found
contains from 60 to 70 acres of land. Trees lately grew upon it,
before the land was cleared, from 4 to 5 feet in diameter. The
country around is rather hilly than otherwise.
An Ancient Furnace Is Discovered
As to other metals found in Tennessee, there is this fact: In the
month of June, in the year 1794, in the county of Davidson, on
Manscoe’s creek, at Manscoe’s Lick, on the creek, which runs
through the lick, a hole or well was dug by Mr. Cafftey, who, at the
distance of 5 or 6 feet through black mud and loose rocks found
the end of a bar of iron, which had been cut off by a cleaving iron,
and had also been split lengthwise. A small distance from that, in
yellow clay, 18 inches under the surface, was a furnace full of
coals and ashes.
Another fact evinces most clearly, the residence of man in West
Tennessee in very ancient times, who knew how to forge metals,
make axes and other metallic tools and implements, and probably
also the art of fusing ore and of making iron or hardened copper,
such as have been long used in Chile by the natives. It also fixes
such residence to a period long preceding that at which Columbus
discovered America.
In the county of Bedford, in West Tennessee, northeast from
Shelbyville, and seventeen miles from it, on the waters of the
Garrison fork, one of the three forks of Duck river, on McBride’s
branch, in the year 1812, was cut down a poplar tree five feet some
inches in diameter. It was felled by Samuel Pearse, Andrew Jones,
and David Dobbs, who found within two or three inches of the
heart, in the curve made by the ax cut into the tree, the old chop of
an ax, which of course must have been made when the tree was a
sapling not more than three inches in diameter.
Of 400 years of age when cut down, it must have been 70 when
Columbus discovered America, and 118 when De Soto marched
through Alabama. If the chop was made by an ax, which the
natives obtained from him, it must have been made since the
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commencement of 282 years from this time; and a poplar sapling
of three inches in diameter could not be more than 8 or 10 years of
age; making the whole age of the tree, to the time it was cut down,
about 300 years in which time a tree of that size could not probably
have grown.
Brass Coin with Minerva on It
Two pieces of brass coin were found in the first part of the year
1823, two miles and a half from Murfreesborough, in an easterly
direction from thence. Each of them had a hole near the edge.
Their size was about that of a nine-penny silver piece of the
present time. The rim projected beyond the circle, as if it had been
intended to clip it.
On the obverse, was the figure in relief of a female, full faced,
steady countenance, rather stern than otherwise; with a cap or
helmet on the head, upon the top of which was a crescent
extending from the forehead backwards. In the legend was the
word Minerva; on the reverse was a slim female figure, with a
ribbon in her left hand, which was tied to the neck of a slim, neatly
formed dog that goes before her, and in the other a bow.
Amongst the letters of the legend in the reverse, are SL. After the
ground, which covered this coin, had been for some years cleared
and ploughed, it was enclosed in a garden on the summit of a small
hill; and in digging there, these pieces were found eighteen inches
under the surface.
A Brief History of Ancient Coinage
There are no Assyrian or Babylonian coins; nor is there any
Phoenician one till 400 before Christ. Sidon and Tyre used
weights. Coinage was unknown in Egypt in early times. The
Lydian coins are the oldest. The Persian coins began 570 before
Christ. The darics were issued by Darius Hystaspes 518 or 521
before Christ. Roman coins have been found in the Orkneys, and in
the remotest parts of Europe. Romans have three heads upon the
side, as that of Valerian and his two sons, Gallienus and Valerian.
On the Roman coins are figures of deities and personifications,
which are commonly attended with their names; Minerva, for
instance, with her helmet and name inscribed in the legend.
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sometimes a spear in her right hand, and shield, with Medusa’s
head, in the other, and an owl standing by her, and sometimes a
cock and sometimes the olive. Diana is manifest by her crescent,
by her bow and quiver on one side, and often by her hounds. The
Roman brass coins have SC. for senatus consultam, till the time of
Gallienus, about the year of our Lord 260. The small brass coins
ceased to be issued for a time in the reign of Pertinax, 19 CE, and
from thence to the time of Valerian. Small brass coins continued
from the latter period till 640 CE. Some coins are found with holes
pierced through them, and sometimes with small brass strings
fastened.
Earliest Roman Coins Date Back to Antoninus
Such were worn as ornaments of the head, neck, and wrist, either
by the ancients themselves, as bearing images of favorite deities, or
in modern times when the Greek girls thus decorated themselves.
From these criteria it may be determined, that these metals are not
counters but coins. Of all the Roman coins that have been found in
Tennessee and Kentucky, the earliest bears date in the time of
Antoninus, the next in the time of Commodus, the next before the
elevation of Pertinax, and the last in the time of Valerian. Coins
prior or subsequent to the space embraced in these periods are not
found; and from hence the conclusion seems to be furnished, that
they were brought into America within one or two centuries at
furthest, after the latter period, which is about the year of our Lord
354, and thence to 260; and by a people who had not afterwards
any intercourse with the countries in which the Roman coins
circulated.
One of these pieces was stained all over with a dark color
resembling that of pale ink, which possibly is the verugo peculiar
to that metal, which issued from it after lying in a dormant state for
a great length of time, and which thus preserved it from decay. The
legend on the reverse, on the lower part, below a line across are the
letters “EL. SL. RECHP.—ENN.”
The author, since writing the above, has seen another coin of the
same metal precisely, which seems to be a mixture of silver and
brass. Upon it, on one side, is the figure of a man’s face; and in the
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legend, LEOPOL. DG. IMP. On the other, under a mark or cross:
El. SL.; also, the sun at the top; and in the legend, only a
contraction of those in the larger piece, namely, RL. C. PERNN.
This, then, is a German coin of modern date.
ROMAN COINS FOUND AT THE OHIO FALLS
In 1997, the Ohio Museum took possession of a cache of Roman coins
that was originally discovered in 1963 by a construction engineer
excavating on the north shore of the Ohio River during construction of
the Sherman Minton Bridge. Coin experts have examined these Roman
coins and declared them to be authentic.
Fig. 9.8. Claudius II (left), Maximinus II (right) (courtesy of Troy McCormick)
The discoverer kept most of the hoard for himself but gave two of
the coins to another engineer on the project. In 1997 the second
engineer’s widow brought these two to Troy McCormick, then manager
of the new Falls of the Ohio State Park Interpretive Center in
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Clarksville, Indiana, not far from the find site. She donated them to the
museum, where they remain today.
The larger coin has been identified by both Mark Lehman, president
of Ancient Coins for Exploration, and Rev. Stephen A. Knapp, senior
pastor at St. John Lutheran Church, Forest Park, Illinois, and a
specialist in late Roman bronze coinage, as a follis of Maximinus II
from 312 or 313 CE, despite McCormick’s original identification of the
coin as a 235 CE bronze of Maximinus I.
The coin of Claudius II is similar in type and period to the recently
discovered Roman coins from Breathitt County, Kentucky, but is in a
much better state of preservation. The latter coin makes this find
several decades later than the Severian Period (193 to 235 CE), to
which the Roman head from Calixtlahuaca, Mexico, has been attributed
on stylistic grounds. Unfortunately, the discoverer moved south to work
on another bridge shortly after the find, and the second engineer’s
widow could not remember his name, so the bulk of the hoard is lost.
For several years, the Falls of the Ohio State Park Interpretive Center
had an exhibit about the find that displayed several casts of both sides
of the two originals, so as to reflect the approximate number of coins
originally in the hoard. The two original coins, depicted in fig. 9.8 (see
above) are in storage and were not on public display. In February 2012,
I was informed that the replicas were still on display, despite an earlier
report to the contrary, in the Interpretive Center as part of the Myths
and Legends exhibit, and that they will remain there at least into 2014.
Recently, three more heavily weathered Roman coins found in
Breathitt County were examined hands-on by Norman Totten, professor
of history, now professor emeritus, at Bentley College. Totten
identified the two thinner coins as antoniniani, a type of bronze Roman
coin minted between 238 and 305 CE. The obverses depict an
unidentifiable emperor wearing the distinctive “solar crown” of the
period. The reverse of one coin depicts two figures standing facing
what apparently is a central altar, while that of the second coin depicts
a female standing figure facing left with a cornucopia in her right hand.
These would originally have had a silver surface, which is long since
gone. The third coin is thicker and depicts a bust facing right and
wearing a laureate wreath rather than a crown. The reverse, according
to Totten, is perhaps a figure of a centaur walking to the right and
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looking back. Its flan (the metal disk from which the coin is made)
seems to be of a North African (Egyptian) or Middle Eastern type. This
coin probably dates to a similar period to that of the two antoniniani
(the singular of which is antoninianus).
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10
EXTREMELY ANCIENT RED-HAIRED
MUMMIES
Mummies of ancient Caucasian giants with red hair have been found in
startlingly diverse areas of the country, from Florida to Nevada. Along
with these finds ample evidence of sophisticated culture, such as fine
weavings, has also been found. Then there are the members of North
Dakota’s Mandan tribe, long known from the earliest days for their red
hair and blue eyes. Perhaps the magnitude of the mystery they represent
has been partially responsible for the lack of general knowledge about
them, or has it been because of definite attempts at suppression of
evidence that flouts all previous theories about origins?
GIANT MUMMIES OF SPIRIT CAVE
What do you think the international reaction would be to news that
mummies were found in Egypt that predated the earliest ones ever
discovered there by more than five thousand years? Surely it would be
front-page news from one end of the planet to the other. Yet news that
two 9,500-year-old mummies were found in America has elicited
barely a whisper. You may think this is impossible or that I’m referring
to some discredited rumor, but the truth could not be clearer or more
convincing.
It turns out that the original discovery was made in 1940, and it has
taken more than sixty years to come to light. Perhaps the only reason
the public is now belatedly finding out about this earth-shattering
discovery is the fact that the remains were not turned over to the
Smithsonian, but kept instead by the Nevada State Museum. The
original find in 1940 of two amazingly well-preserved mummies was
made by Sydney and Georgia Wheeler, a husband and wife
archaeological team working for the Nevada State Parks division, who
were commissioned to study the archaeological effects that guano
mining was having on any possible historical remains to be found in the
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arid caves scattered across the Nevada wastelands. (Bat guano is mined
because it contains saltpeter, which is used to make fertilizer and is the
main ingredient of gunpowder.)
The site was appropriately called Spirit Cave, and it is located
thirteen miles east of Fallon, Nevada. In order to find the mummies and
the sixty-seven related artifacts associated with the burial, the Wheelers
had to dig through several feet of guano droppings that covered the
base of the cave and preserved what lay underneath. The two human
mummies were expertly wrapped in a highly sophisticated weaving
made of tule matting that exhibited extremely fine knotting and hand
weaving not thought to exist until thousands of years later. Because the
mummies were sealed in bat guano the weavings are extremely well
preserved, and they are arguably the greatest evidence of ancient
weaving in the world, yet close to nothing is generally known about
them.
THE SPIRIT CAVE MAN AT THE MIDDLE OF ALL THE
CONTROVERSY
The male mummy was in better condition and was found lying on a fur
blanket, dressed in a twisted skin robe with leather moccasins on its
feet and a twined mat sewn around its head and shoulders. A similar
mat was wrapped around the lower portion of the body and bound
under the feet. Skin remained on the back and shoulders as well as a
small tuft of straight dark hair, which changed to reddish-brown when
exposed to light and air. The age of the mummy was estimated at forty-
five years and its height well in excess of six feet.
The original dig in 1940 was led by the Wheelers with the help of
local residents, and the two mummies and sixty-seven related objects
were taken to the Nevada State Museum, where they were examined
and dated at between 1,500 and 2,000 years old. They were then
transported to the museum’s storage facility in Carson City and
promptly forgotten about. In 1996 the mummies came to the attention
of Erv Taylor, an anthropologist at the University of California,
Riverside, who decided that new breakthroughs in mass spectrometry
dating could reveal the true age of the mummies, especially in light of
the extremely good condition of the tule diamond-plaited matte
wrappings and the excellent preservation of the mummified bones and
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associated assorted relics.
One can only imagine Taylor’s stunned reaction when the results
came in. The mummies were dated to 9,400 before the present, in what
is scientifically referred to as uncalibrated radio-carbon years before
present (URCYP)—11.5 KYA.
Yet instead of this momentous news shattering the world of
archaeology to its very roots, the Bureau of Land Management stepped
into the breach and shut down all news of the discovery in 1997 when it
ruled in favor of a claim by the Paiute-Shoshone tribe of Fallon,
Nevada, that the bones belonged to them by rights of the Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
Although no DNA testing was allowed at the time of Taylor’s dating,
the Paiute-Shoshone tribe’s claim held until pressure from the academic
community forced the courts to reconsider the claims of the Bureau of
Land Management related to the Indian ancestral claims. In 2006, the
courts overturned the findings of the bureau and the Paiute-Shoshone
tribe and allowed DNA testing of the mummy by Douglas W. Owsley,
division head of Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National
Museum of Natural History, and Richard L. Jantz, an anthropology
professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The tests revealed
that the mummy was of a Caucasian origin, with a long face and
cranium that most closely resembled either Nordic or Ainu ancestry
and bore no ancestral relationship to either the Paiute or Shoshone
tribes. Although these findings were made public and extensively
covered by the local media, this groundbreaking news has received
barely a glimmer of attention in the outside world.
In order to put this find in its proper context and understand the other
related and equally amazing finds in this part of the western United
States, it is imperative that we reconstruct the local topography of this
area as it existed ten thousand years ago. Although this knowledge
should be commonplace to most schoolchildren, the true map of ancient
America remains a complete mystery to most all its citizens.
As it turns out, much like the Sahara region prior to 6000 BCE, the
western United States prior to the gigantic Lassen volcanic explosion,
posited at some time around 5000 BCE, was home to one of the biggest
freshwater lakes in the world and contained a lush biodiversity that one
geologist has characterized as abundant in every respect, perhaps the
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lushest in the world at that time, with every kind of plant and animal
necessary for human life. The area of this ancient lake was immense,
covering approximately 8,500 square miles in the northeast section of
Nevada, bordering on California and Oregon.
Its name is Lake Lahonton, and at its peak around eleven thousand
years ago it was almost one thousand feet deep in places and was fed
by the Humboldt, Walker, Truckee, and Carson River systems.
Remnants of the dried-out lake can be seen at Pyramid Lake, Lake
Russell, and Lake Tahoe. At its peak the lake’s resting waterline was at
approximately 5,200 feet, and consequently many of the finds around
its ancient shoreline are found at least at that height.
The Lenni Lenape Indians on the East Coast of America report that
they originally lived in the West until their world was destroyed by fire
and they were forced to migrate to the other side of the Mississippi
River in search of food and shelter. When we understand that these
desert regions were once home to abundant life, the other related
prehistoric archaeological finds in this area become understandable and
even expected, as we are no longer looking at isolated desert remains
devoid of logic and contextual understanding.
Fig. 10.1. Ice age lakes in the Southwestern United States, with Red Rock Pass
located on the north side of Lake Bonneville (courtesy of Ken Perry)
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THE ANCIENT RED-HAIRED GIANTS OF LOVELOCK,
NEVADA
In light of this, the equally amazing finds at Lovelock Cave, eighty
miles east of Reno, should come as no surprise. Once again we are
dealing with a guano-filled cave on the shoreline of Lake Lahonton, in
an area called the Great Basin, only this time the original find was
made in 1911 and involved considerably more bodies and artifacts that,
because of their highly unusual nature, are routinely criticized and
dismissed by mainstream archaeology to this day, although the related
finds at Spirit Cave should change all of the doubters’ minds, especially
as the reality of Lake Lahonton’s Great Basin culture becomes more
well known and accepted.
Quite simply what we are dealing with here is what the popular press
at the time called “red-haired giants,” which immediately roused the
hackles of mainstream academia and caused them to immediately
sweep the whole unpleasant subject under the rug. Fortunately for us,
the skeletons and artifacts were not sent to the Smithsonian, and
although many of the pieces have disappeared from the historical
record, some can still be found in local universities and museums in the
area.
THE LEGEND OF THE SI-TE-CAH
The Paiute Indians have a legend about their ancestors and red-haired
giants. These giants, known as the Si-Te-Cah, were a red-haired tribe of
cannibals who lived near the Paiutes, often harassed them with constant
war and occasionally captured victims to eat. Eventually the various
Paiute groups had had enough and decided to band together to eradicate
the Si-Te-Cah (translated as “tule eaters”). Legend has it that the
Paiutes cornered the giants and forced them underground, into a cave
system, piled brush over the entrance, and set it on fire with flaming
arrows, extinguishing the Si-Te-Cah for good.
Modern historians and anthropologists have dismissed this legend as
fantasy and allegorical myth, but others have claimed that
archaeological finds indicate otherwise. Could there really have been a
race of Caucasoid giants that inhabited North America before the
Native Americans? Are the artifacts discovered in Lovelock Cave proof
that history is wrong, or are they just another hoax?
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Lovelock Cave first caught the attention of archaeologists in 1924,
thirteen years after miners began harvesting the several-foot-thick layer
of bat guano that had built up on the cave floor. The miners continued
to dig until sifting out the ancient relics beneath the top layer of bat
guano became too much hassle. They notified the University of
California about their finds, and the excavation began.
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Fig. 10.2. These skulls were photographed at the Humboldt Museum in
Winnemucca, Nevada.
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Fig. 10.3. L. L. Loud of the Paleontology Department of the University of California
removes the famous duck decoys from Lovelock Cave.
Among the artifacts found were woven cloth, tools, duck decoys (for
hunting), inscribed stones, and supposedly, very tall red-haired
mummies. Thousands of pieces were found discarded outside the cave
after being separated from the guano. Most of the nonhuman artifacts
can be found in local museums or at the University of California
Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley, but the mysterious bones and
mummies are not so easy to come by. The artifacts themselves prove
that an advanced culture did indeed predate the Paiute Indians, but
whether the legend of red-haired giants is historically accurate remains
unknown.
What is significant to note is that the scientific community has
assiduously scrubbed all references to the six- to eight-foot-tall, red-
haired skeletons found at the site. As will be seen, this repeated effort
to clear the historical record of all references to a pre-Indian Caucasian
culture in the United States can be seen as working in harmony with the
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NAGPRA policies of the federal government, which works on agendas
based on political correctness and not objective science.
Fig. 10.4. A view from the mouth of Lovelock Cave
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Fig. 10.5. Heads of the exquisite tule-wrapped duck decoys from Lovelock Cave
Fig. 10.6. Examples of the fine workmanship found in association with the
Lovelock Cave burials
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Fig. 10.7. Normal-size teeth compared with a giant jaw from Lovelock Cave
Lovelock Cave, or Horseshoe Cave, as it was then known, was
originally mined for fertilizer in 1911 by two miners named David
Pugh and James Hart, who were hired to mine for bat guano from the
cave, to be later used as gun powder and fertilizer. They removed a
layer of guano estimated to be from three to six feet deep and weighing
about 250 tons. The guano was dug up from the upper cave deposits,
screened on the hillside outside the cave, and shipped to a fertilizer
company in San Francisco. The miners had dumped the top layers into
a heap outside of the cave. They were aware of the presence of some
ancient artifacts, but only the most interesting specimens were saved.
As the finds began to accumulate, L. L. Loud of the Paleontology
Department at the University of California was contacted by the mining
company, and in the spring of 1912 he arrived to recover any materials
that remained from the guano mining of the previous year. Loud also
excavated Lovelock Cave for five months and reportedly collected
roughly ten thousand material remains. The majority of the finds were
made in refuse pits inside and outside the cave, but the University of
California alleges that no comprehensive lists of the skeletons and
artifacts that were found were ever made, which is quite unusual and
not in keeping with the protocol of the day.
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What was reported at the time was that in addition to the thousands
of artifacts, mummies similar to the ones found at Spirit Cave were, in
fact, unearthed. The mummies were reported as being from six to eight
feet tall with red hair and lying some four feet under the surface of the
cave.
Twelve years after the first excavation, in the summer of 1924, Loud
returned to Lovelock Cave with M. R. Harrington of the Museum of the
American Indian. It was at this time that the most famous Lovelock
artifacts were found, the amazing cache of eleven duck decoys that
attests to the lake culture that predominated in this region. These
amazing artifacts were made from bundled tule, which the Lake
Lahonton culture used much like papyrus for clothing, boats, and
artistic and religious objects. The decoys were painted and feathered,
and despite their rich cultural and artistic importance, again, for
unknown reasons, neither the Museum of the American Indian nor the
Smithsonian nor the American Museum of Natural History accepted
any of these objects into their collections.
It was not until 1984 that the duck decoys were properly studied in
an academic environment. At that time, A. J. T. Tull of the University
of Arizona, Tucson, conducted the dating of the specimens. Duck
Decoy 13/4513 was dated at 2,080 + 330 BP, and Duck Decoy
13/4512B was dated at 2,250 + 230 BCE. In addition to these duck
decoys, a wide range of other materials has been recovered that
includes slings, nets, sandals, tunics, and baskets. Not only are these
items not on general public display, they also have never been tested as
to their antiquity.
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Fig. 10.8. This mummy wrap provides an example of the fine level of weaving
achieved more than eight thousand years ago.
Since the scientific community refuses to acknowledge the reality of
the skeletons found at Lovelock, the site has been dated by studying the
coprolite droppings found in association with other artifacts on the
accepted “surface floor” of the cave. Based on those findings it has
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been determined that the tule people had a diet rich in fish and game,
and the earliest habitation of the cave has been dated to 2580 BCE.
Since the remains of Spirit Cave were found in the same general area
and on the shoreline of the same lake, this could mean that as the lake
shrunk in size, the resident tule culture moved to recently exposed
caves closer to the new shoreline, or more simply that the cave has
never been properly studied and more extensive excavations could
reveal continuous occupation going back at least five thousand more
years to a date that corresponds to the similar cultural context of the
findings at Spirit Cave.
Recently it has been confirmed that four of the ancient skulls
unearthed at Lovelock Cave are, in fact, in the possession of the
Humboldt Museum in Winnemucca, Nevada. According to Barbara
Powell, who is director of the collection, the museum is prohibited by
the state of Nevada from putting the skulls on public display because
“the state does not recognize their legitimacy.” They are instead kept in
the storage room and shown to visitors from all over the world only by
request. In addition, Powell said that additional bones and artifacts
were transferred to the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in
Berkeley, California, where they are kept but also never put on display.
Whether the Lovelock Cave mummies ever really existed or were
deliberately covered up, we may never know. The existing artifacts do
seem to substantiate the Paiute legend, and evidence of gigantism has
been discovered, and documented, in other places across the planet.
The Lovelock Cave claim seems to have all the vital pieces, except for
the giant mummies themselves. Were they hidden away in some
warehouse, so humanity wouldn’t see the errors of modern history? Or
were they the imaginary compilation of an ancient legend and a few
mysterious bones?
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Fig. 10.9. The Lovelock Cave hugs the Humboldt River
Fig. 10.10. The entrance to Lovelock Cave can be seen in the upper right-hand
corner of the photograph.
If you want to follow the trail and perhaps answer that question, you
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might begin with the PDF file of a document by Loud and Harrington
titled “Lovelock Cave,” published by the University of California in
1929. See appendices 3 and 4 for personal accounts of the legends of
the cave. The investigators at the time did a very good job of analyzing
what they could of the site. However, at that time knowledge of native
U.S. archaeology and history was not what it is today, and they had so
many interesting issues competing for their attention. I only wish the
site and the legends could be reinvestigated today with open minds and
that the original artifacts were still available.
Something to ponder in the meantime is provided by Sarah
Winnemucca Hopkins, daughter of Paiute Chief Winnemucca, who
related many stories about the Si-Te-Cah in her book Life Among the
Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims.
My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I
have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father
to son. I have a dress, which has been in our family a great many
years, trimmed with the reddish hair. I am going to wear it some
time when I lecture. It is called a mourning dress, and no one has
such a dress but my family.
GIANT SKELETON FOUND IN UTAH
THE NEW YORK SUN, AUGUST 27, 1891
The gigantic skeleton of a man, measuring 8 feet 6 inches in height,
was found near the Jordan River just outside Salt Lake City, last week.
The find was made by a workman who was digging an irrigation ditch.
The skull was uncovered at a depth of eight feet from the surface of the
ground and the skeleton was standing bolt upright. The workmen had to
dig down nine feet in order to exhume it. The bones were much
decayed and crumbled at the slightest touch. They were put together
with great care and the skeleton was found to measure 8 feet 6 inches in
height: the skull measured 11 inches in diameter and the feet 19 inches
long. A copper chain, to which was attached three medallions covered
with curious hieroglyphics, was found around the neck of the skeleton
and near it were found a stone hammer, some pieces of pottery, an
arrowhead, and some copper medals. Archaeologists believe that the
original owner of the skeleton belonged to the race of mound builders.
304
THE FLORIDA BOG MUMMIES
Let’s now turn our attention to the northeast coast of Florida and the
case of the Florida bog mummies. The original finds were made in
1982 at Titusville, Florida, when real estate developers Jack Eckerd and
Jim Swanson began building a road over the one-quarter-acre
Windover Pond in Brevard County, about five miles from Cape
Canaveral. When their backhoe operator uncovered several skulls, the
developers immediately called in local archaeologists to have a look at
the ancient stained bones that were being uncovered.
Fig. 10.11. This photo clearly shows the amazing preservation of the bog
mummies’ knotted red hair. Brain samples were also obtained, confirming a date
of 7500 BCE (courtesy of Bullenwacher).
Despite the fact that the state of Florida has a responsibility to test
finds of this nature, once the state determined that no current murder
was involved, they refused to pay for proper radiocarbon dating of the
bones. If not for the largesse and intellectual curiosity of Eckerd and
Swanson, the age of what has been called “one of the most significant
archaeological sites ever excavated” may never have been discovered at
all.
Thankfully, Swanson and Eckerd paid for the radiocarbon dating out
305
of their own pockets, and once the results came in, everyone was
stunned by the findings.
Despite the fact that two anthropologists, Jerald T. Milanich of the
University of Florida, Gainesville, and Glen Doran of Florida State
University, were both apprised of the spectacular findings, no monies
were allocated to drain the bog pond to see what else was waiting to be
discovered under several feet of water. In order to facilitate a proper
excavation, the two developers changed their construction plans and
even donated $60,000 worth of pumping equipment to see that the pond
was properly drained. Once again, no state or federal funds were
forthcoming, and Doran had to spend the next two years securing
private donations to facilitate the drainage of the pond.
In 1984, work finally got under way to drain the pond of its six to ten
feet of water in order to gain access to the bones that were found under
six feet of peat. All told, the workers had to dig 160 wells, which
drained more than ten thousand gallons of water a minute, in order to
finally drain the pond down to its peat base. Once it was drained,
workers then used picks and shovels to dig into the peat until the ritual
burials were discovered at the level of six feet under the surface of the
pond’s bottom bed. One of the head archaeologists on the excavation
compared digging out the peat to trying to scoop up chocolate pudding
while bobbing underwater. Due to finances, only half the pond was
eventually excavated, but what was found was historic.
All told, the bones of 168 individuals were recovered, ranging in age
from infants to adults in excess of sixty years of age. That this was an
official cemetery there can be no doubt, as the heads of all the
individuals were held down by ritual stakes and the bodies were all laid
on their left sides with their heads pointing to the west. The oldest
skeletons were found to be in excess of 8,280 years old, and there was
evidence of continual use of the burial site for more than one thousand
years.
Around 8000 BCE the oceans were about three hundred feet lower
than they are today, and the weather was cooler and less humid than at
present. Food was plentiful in this heavily forested region of Florida,
making life good for the people who buried their dead in a shallow
pond near what is now Titusville. In the shadow of today’s Disney
World, they hunted white-tailed deer and bobcat among the pine and
306
oak trees and fished for bass and sunfish or scooped up turtles, frogs,
and snakes.
“They enjoyed a good lifestyle,” said Doran, the Florida State
University anthropologist who oversaw the Windover Pond excavation,
which lasted from 1984 to 1986. “Life was a little easier than it even
may have been a few thousand years later. You had a lot of different
resources packed pretty densely into this area within a few kilometers
walk in any direction. Clearly, this was a good place to be.”
Even more incredible was the state of preservation of the skeletons
due to being sealed in the acid-neutral peat. In over ninety of the
skeletons actual brain matter was preserved. This allowed the scientists
the unprecedented opportunity to test the intact skulls with X-rays,
computed tomography (CT) scans, and magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI). The average height of the inhabitants was between 5'2" and
5'8", and the bodies were buried within twenty-four to forty-eight hours
after death, based on the DNA and tissue that was examined. DNA
testing on the bodies was conducted by Joe Lorenz, and as was the case
with the skeletons at Spirit Cave in Nevada, the genomes were found to
contain Haplogroup X, which is a distinct DNA marker, only found in
Caucasians of generally northern European origin. That these were
what are called “water burials” is evidenced by the tight textile
wrapping of the body and the ritual wooden stakes that were used to
secure the heads and keep the skeletons from floating to the surface.
The only other evidence for this type of water burial is found in
northern Europe and most specifically the British Isles.
307
Fig. 10.12. This bog mummy from Wales illustrates the remarkable state of
preservation possible in a bog burial (courtesy of Carlos Munoz-Yague).
In addition, the textiles found at this site exhibit a high degree of
weaving sophistication, and like the textiles found at Spirit Cave, they
fly in face of the general understanding of the weaving techniques at
that distant date. “To put this into context,” Doran said, “these people
had already been dead for three thousand or four thousand years before
the first stones were laid for the Egyptian pyramids!”
308
Fig. 10.13. Col. Bill Royal began diving in the Warm Springs sinkhole in the 1950s
and almost immediately began finding human skeletal remains.
Despite the problems associated with gaining the finances to
excavate this site, they pale in comparison with the problems that have
been encountered since the passage in 1990 of the NAGPRA federal
laws, now enforced arbitrarily in defense of Native American tribes’
sensibilities regarding extremely ancient skeletons. One of the major
reasons the discoveries at this site are not better known and the results
of the Haplogroup X DNA tests are not general knowledge can be laid
at the door of the NAGPRA restrictions regarding discussion or
309
exhibition of any of these ancient finds, as it would be considered
sacrilege by the local Indian tribes of the area.
The irony about this slavish obedience to local American Indian
sensibilities is that at both the Spirit and Lovelock Caves in Nevada and
the now numerous bog sites in Florida, the Indians’ own native lore
speaks of the original inhabitants of the area as being white-skinned,
red-haired giants.
The vast number of finds at Windover Pond caused archaeologists to
reappraise other bog and water burial sites found in that area of Florida,
and what they have found is even more astonishing in terms of dating
in relation to the original inhabitants. The other Florida bog burial sites
that are now officially recognized as being from the same general era
date, incredibly in some cases, to 12,000 BCE and before. The first of
these burial sites is located on the western coast of Florida, a little over
midway down the coast, in Little Salt Springs on U.S. Route 41 in
North Port, Florida, which is located in Sarasota County. In the 1950s,
scuba divers in the area discovered that this seemingly small freshwater
pond was actually a sinkhole or cenote that extended more than two
hundred feet down to its peat moss base. Later underwater mapping
revealed that the lake was actually forty-five feet deep, and an inverted
cone shaft dropped vertically from the bottom another 245 feet, and
that its general shape resembled similar cenotes found in the Yucatan
peninsula. During unofficial dives in the 1960s and 1970s, bones and
other human and animal remains were discovered, both in the peat
moss base and along the sides of the shaft, and in 1979 the pond was
added to the National Register of Historic Places and in 1982 was
officially gifted to the University of Miami so that it could be preserved
and catalogued in proper academic fashion.
Although bone, wood, stone, and charcoal objects dating from 4000
to 12,000 BC have been found there, it is the hundreds of human
burials dating from 3000 to 6000 BCE that are causing controversy at
the site. Although the site has been in the possession of the University
of Miami since 1982, it has not been under the supervision of anyone
from the archaeology department, but instead has been overseen by
Associate Professor John Gifford of the university’s Rosenstiel School
of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and it was not until 2009 that the
William and Marie Selby Loundation donated $100,000 to support
310
studying the remains found in the spring in a more comprehensive
manner, in conjunction with John Francis, vice president of research,
conservation, and exploration at National Geographic. Although a
majority of the hundreds of burials have been recovered with brain
tissue intact, as was the case with the Windover Pond mummies, the
university alleges that no definitive DNA Haplogroup evidence has
been obtained so far, which is ridiculous and, if true, argues very badly
for the scientific reputation of the university.
Finds similar to those found at Windover Pond and Little Salt
Springs have also been reported at Bay West in Collier County near
Naples, on the west coast of Florida, south of Little Salt Springs. The
bones at this site have been dated to between 4000 and 6000 BCE, and
despite the fact that the site has been known about for more than thirty
years, no other information regarding DNA status has so far been
released. Similar finds in Republic Grove in Hardee County have also
been found to date between 5,500 and 6,500 years ago.
In terms of human dating the most spectacular finds in Florida so far
are those made at Warm Springs, another sinkhole found in the city of
North Port, on the western coast of Florida.
Unfortunately for history, the Warm Springs sinkhole was virtually
stripped bare by amateur divers before the city of North Port in
Sarasota County finally bought it for $5.5 million at the end of 2010.
The sinkhole is an hour-glass-shaped structure approximately 250 feet
deep with a peat moss base like its sister sinkhole in Little Salt Springs,
which is also in the city of North Port. Scuba divers led by Col. Bill
Royal began diving in the sinkhole in the 1950s and almost
immediately began finding human and animal remains, including the
skeletons of giant ground sloths, saber-toothed tigers, horses, and
camelids dating up to twelve thousand years old. Unfortunately the site
was turned into a health spa in the 1960s, and guests were encouraged
to dive the site and take home any artifacts they found while they were
exploring underwater.
311
Fig. 10.14. This drawing gives you an idea of the different levels of the spring.
Warm Springs was originally thought to be about thirty to forty feet deep.
In 1972 Wilburn Cockrell of Florida State University became aware
of the importance of the site and explored there from 1972 to 1975 and
again from 1984 to 1986. During that time he reported finding twenty
skeletons with their skulls held in place with ritual wooden stakes, all
resting on their left sides with their heads turned to the west in the exact
same manner as the skeletons found at the adjacent sinkholes in Little
Salt Springs and Windover Pond. Also consistent with the other finds,
intact brain matter was also recovered, and radiocarbon dating placed
the oldest of the skeletons at 9000 BCE. The skeletons on average were
between 5'6" and 6'2" tall. Cockrell also found a variety of grave goods
and artifacts and is convinced that this was a major burial ground that at
one time probably contained thousands of burials and artifacts, which
were stripped from the site during its history as a recreational diving
hole. Although intact brain matter has been recovered from the site,
Florida State University has never released any DNA testing on the
312
Haplogroup status of the skeletons in question, but since the burial
methods are identical to those found at Windover Pond, one can safely
assume that they are also of Haplogroup X.
THE LOST KINGDOM OF THE RED-HAIRED, BLUE-EYED
INDIANS
The Mandan Indians are generally found in North Dakota, and since
their first contact with French explorers in 1738, this blond- and red-
haired, blue-eyed tribe has been the source of intense speculation as to
their European origins. In 1796, the Mandans were visited by the Welsh
explorer John Evans, who was hoping to find proof that their language
contained Welsh words. Evans had arrived in St. Louis two years prior,
and after being imprisoned for a year, was hired by Spanish authorities
to lead an expedition to chart the upper Missouri. Evans spent the
winter of 1796-1797 with the Mandans but found no evidence of any
Welsh influence. In July 1797 he wrote to Dr. Samuel Jones, “Thus
having explored and charted the Missurie for 1,800 miles and by my
Communications with the Indians this side of the Pacific Ocean from
35 to 49 degrees of Latitude, I am able to inform you that there is no
such People as the Welsh Indians.” In 1804, Lewis and Clark spent
time visiting with the tribe, and it was here that they met Sacagawea,
who later aided them as a scout and translator. Then, even later, in
1833, Western artist George Catlin, who was also convinced of their
European roots, lived with the tribe and painted their village life and
religious ceremonies. Although traditional archaeologists reject outright
any European heritage for this mysterious tribe, no definitive
Haplogroup X testing has ever been done on any of the surviving tribe
members, and until scientific blood work is performed, all theories as to
their original origins are purely based on superstition, academic bias,
and ill-founded opinions.
THE MANDANS AND REPORTS OF RED-HAIRED, BLUE¬
EYED INDIANS—LEWIS AND CLARK JOURNALS
The following section regarding the Mandans is from James P. Ronda’s
book Lewis and Clark among the Indians, a modern telling of Lewis
and Clark’s explorations that uses their journals to focus on their
interactions with the various Indian tribes they encountered.
313
From Lewis and Clark among the Indians
By James P. Ronda
The center of a Mandan village was the sacred cedar post and the
open plaza around it. The cedar post represented Lone Man, the
primary Mandan culture hero. On the north edge of the plaza was
the large medicine or Okipa lodge. Hanging on poles outside the
Okipa lodge were effigies representing various spirits. The
Mandan villages seen by Lewis and Clark consisted of about forty
to fifty domestic lodges arranged around the plaza. The social
position of each household determined the location of lodges.
Those families with important ceremonial responsibilities and
those who owned powerful bundles lived near the plaza while less
prominent households occupied lodges farther away. Mandan and
Hidatsa earth lodges were usually occupied for anywhere between
seven to twelve years. Each lodge housed from five to sixteen
persons with the average number in a Mandan lodge being ten
persons. At the time of Lewis and Clark, Mandan and Hidatsa
villages were defended by log palisades.
These villages, so familiar from the descriptions of explorers and
traders like Lewis and Clark and Alexander Henry the Younger
and nineteenth-century artists like George Catlin and Karl Bodmer,
were in fact only part of the settled experience of the Upper
Missouri villagers. They divided their time between large,
permanent summer lodge towns and smaller winter camps. The
winter lodges, built in wooded bottoms to escape the harsh winter
storms, were neither large nor especially well constructed. Lewis
and Clark did not comment on these winter camps, and it is
possible that fear of Sioux attack kept many Mandans and Hidatsas
within the protection of the more substantial summer villages.
Looking down on the towns from a high riverbank, David
Thompson was reminded of “so many large hives clustered
together.” And so must they have seemed to Lewis and Clark
seven years later.
Lewis and Clark were not the first white men to see the Mandan
and Hidatsa villages and their surrounding fields of corn, beans,
squash, and sunflowers. The first recorded European visit to the
villages had occurred on the afternoon of December 3, 1738, when
314
Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de La Verendrye, accompanied by
French traders and Assiniboin guides, entered a Mandan “fort”
near the Heart River. Attracted by tales of fair-skinned, red-haired
natives who lived in large towns and possessed precious metals, La
Verendrye had made the long journey from Fort La Reine on the
Assiniboine River to see those mysterious people. Although La
Verendrye did not find the fabled white Indians, he did record the
first European impressions of the Mandan lifeway. That record,
taken along with evidence preserved from the 1742-43 visit of La
Verendrye’s sons to the region, offers the picture of prosperous
earth lodge people living along the Missouri River near the Heart
and already enjoying French and Spanish goods.
315
11
MEGALITHIC CATALINA
The Blond-Haired Children of the Nine-Feet-Tall Kings
The most amazing discoveries in California were eventually found on
Catalina Island. In the 1920s, the island of Catalina was owned by the
Wrigley Chewing Gum family, who hired Professor Ralph Glidden,
curator of the Catalina Museum, to conduct a series of digs on the
island under the direction of the museum. What they found made
headlines around the world, only to be written out of the history books
less than ten years later. In short, Glidden and his team exhumed the
remains of 3,781 skeletons of a race of blond-haired giants. The tallest
was believed to be a king who measured nine feet, two inches tall and
the average height of the skeletons was reported to be around seven
feet. In addition, the team found the remains of a megalithic
“Stonehengeera” temple.
The selected articles below from 1928 to 1930 detail the discoveries
and demonstrate the excitement about them at the time.
HOW OUR WHITE INDIANS ARE RISING OUT
OF LEGEND INTO FACT
FOUND: THE MYSTERIOUS ROYAL BURYING
GROUND OF BLOND CHILDREN FATHERED BY
A RACE OF GIANTS THREE THOUSAND YEARS
AGO ON CATALINA ISLAND
OGDEN, UTAH, NOVEMBER 10, 1929
That a race of magnificent, tall, white Indians once roamed the
Americas long before the first European sailor crossed the Atlantic has
been a subject for mild, almost bantering debate among archaeologists.
316
None of them took the thing very seriously; it was regarded as
picturesque legend. But now amazing new discoveries have confirmed
beyond question that white men had already lived in America for
centuries when Columbus landed.
THESE FINDS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT
IN YEARS
New finds on Catalina Island, off the California coast, overshadow in
richness and significance most of the archaeological finds of recent
years. Digging on an outlying part of the island, long the favorite
location for movie directors, Professor Ralph Glidden, curator of the
Catalina Museum, has uncovered overwhelming truth that a fair¬
skinned, tow-headed, highly intelligent race once lived in the West.
A VAST CACHE OF SKELETONS
Glidden’s discovery of a vast cache of skeletons, urns, heads, wampum,
and domestic utensils, is no ordinary Indian relic find. Not only does it
reveal the existence of a white race of Indians living in Catalina at least
3000 years ago, but it poses a tragic mystery.
Professor Glidden’s first startling find was a huge funeral urn carved
out of stone and containing the skeleton of a young girl, crouched in an
upright position within, the finger-bones of her little hand clenched
over the wampum-inlaid brim. In a circle surrounding the urn were
interred the bodies of 64 little children in tiers four deep, their little
heads placed close together.
Some five feet below the children, was the skeleton of a gigantic
man: a man measuring seven feet eight inches from the top of the skull
to the ankle bone. A spear blade was imbedded in the ribs of the left
side.
There was conclusive evidence—including strands of hair—that all
these people were blondes. At first these white Indians were thought to
be albinos. But careful examination proved that they were not, although
they did possess some albino characteristics.
One of the curator’s chief problems was to dry the skulls, which he
found buried in damp sand near the water’s edge. Great care had to be
taken that they did not crumble when exposed to the air. In the daytime
317
he would place them in rows in front of his tent. At night he covered
them with tarpaulin to keep out the dampness.
----tP This Girl’s Few Pennies Turned Into $120,000
RStssflg SSSSn
• ■ m ■ » — AM MM M
Fig. 11.1. Just one of many nationally syndicated articles on the incredible finds at
Catalina Island (Ogden Standard Examiner, November 10, 1929)
318
A GIFT TO CHEW ON: 187 GIANT SKULLS
PRESENTED TO WRIGLEY HEIR, ALSO 187
ARTIFACTS FOUND
One evening, Philip K. Wrigley of Chicago, whose father, William
Wrigley Jr., owns Catalina Island, visited the expedition’s leader.
Wrigley had been on a strenuous wild mountain goat hunt and stopped
by to ask how Professor Glidden was getting on.
“Fine,” replied the Professor and pulled away the tarpaulin. The
revelation was startling: 187 human skulls, staring grimly at Wrigley in
the moonlight.
2 inches tali.
At RIGHT
TV* Skfltl** #1
ft Mta Who Wft* 7 FmI 8 Inch**
Till Rtpotod B«!«w tbo T#reo
in Which tkft R*ei«i»u •»
Children Were Found.
During expeditiun to tfc8 interior
of Professor Glicler. collected,
the skeletons of 3,731 Incians. . The
largest l.c found was cf a man 9- feet
Practically all t^e male
adults were of grlgantic stature, ever*
agin^arouDj^^^eoM^^sight.
Fig. 11.2. During the dig on Catalina Island, Professor Glidden collected the
skeletons of 3,781 “Indians.” The largest he found was a man nine feet, two
inches tall. Practically all the male adults were of gigantic stature, averaging
around seven feet in height.
319
l\
Indian
Heye Foundation
Broadway af 155'^ SI New York Gly
Ralph Glidden, collector
Fig. 11.3. Professor Ralph Glidden, curator of the Catalina Museum, 1929
GIANTS TEMPLES AND MISSING
SKELETONS ON THE WEST COAST
A GIANT’S TEMPLE TO THE SUN GOD FOUND
ON CATALINA ISLAND
BY LYLE ABBOTT
TYRONE DAILY HERALD, JANUARY 6, 1930
A trail of human sacrifices leading to the temple of the sun god of the
ancient Channel Island Indians was followed today by Professor Ralph
Glidden, archaeologist. Three of the four gates of the supposed temple
of Chinigchinich, that bloody deity of the long ago, have been
unearthed. A rich reward of relic treasures awaits the third expedition
in search of the east gate. Glidden is Curator of the Catalina Museum.
At the north temple gate, Glidden found a large funeral urn
320
containing the skeleton of a girl. He believes the girl, a princess from
the riches of her ornament, was a human sacrifice. The small hands of
the sacrifice were clutching the rim of the urn. Beneath the urn lay the
skeletons of 64 children, the heads forming a circle.
Fig. 11.4. Photograph of artifact from Catalina Island, California, 1932 (courtesy of
Southwest Museum of the American Indian collection)
SEVEN-FOOT, SIX-INCH GIANT UNCOVERED
IN CATALINA
Still deeper in the soil, Glidden found the bones of a man who in life
measured seven feet, six inches, in height. He had been killed by a
spear thrust. The first spear head was still imbedded in the chest. Pearl
pendants, carved eagle claws, little boxes of clam-shell trinkets of
carved bone and stone, and a jasper knife blade were found with the
skeletons.
IN 1542 AND 1602 SPANISH HISTORIANS
REPORTED ON THE SUN TEMPLE
Two Spanish historians who accompanied the expeditions of Don Juan
Cabrillo and Don Viscaino to Catalina Island in 1542 and 1602, have
left vivid word-pictures of the Indians they found there. Both Father
Torquemada and Father Geronimo de Zarate Zalmeron saw the Temple
of Chinigchinich.
321
At that early time the Temple consisted of a large circle of upright
stones, similar to the Druid temple at Stonehenge, England. The stones
were believed to point to the sun at midday. The circle of upright
monoliths enclosed the hideous idol of the Sun God. This idol bore
some resemblance to the images found by the Spaniards in the Aztec
temples of Mexico. Thousands of artifacts have been unearthed by
Glidden. “They show,” he says, “a high state of barbaric progress on
the island.”
Glidden’s work is sponsored by William Wrigley, Jr., owner of the
island.
The following account of the Catalina temple appeared less than two
years prior to the preceding story. This syndicated story provides
additional details, like the discovery of an ancient map and the
machine-like details of the 134-pound urn, which indicate the high
degree of masonry and machining skills of the extremely ancient
settlers of California.
CHILD SACRIFICES AT THE CATALINA SUN
GOD TEMPLE
APPLETON POST-CRESCENT, NOVEMBER 19, 1928
An attempt to follow ancient trails to the long lost ancient island temple
of Chinigchinich, the Sun God, has resulted instead in the discovery of
a burial space of a small Indian princess some 3000 years ago, and
evidence indicating that child sacrifices were made in wholesale
fashion by tribes of the Channel Islands, off the coast of California.
Within a stone urn, weighing some 134 pounds and fashioned as
skillfully as though by modern tools instead of primitive instruments
was found the skeleton of an Indian girl between five and seven years.
Her small hands had clutched the rim of the urn whose rich
ornamentation bespeaks her royal lineage. In a circle with the urn as a
center were counted by Professor Ralph Glidden, curator of the
Catalina museum of the Channel Island Indians, the skeletons of 64
children buried in tiers four deep, with small heads touching each other.
Beneath them was the skeleton of a seven-foot man. A spear blade was
still fixed in the ribs. The sand within the funeral urn had the
322
appearance of ground crystal—apparently, according to the discoverer,
a sacred sand used in the burial of Indian royalty—and was far different
from that which had sifted over the graves of the other children.
These finds, as well as a wealth of obsidian knives, spear points, and
arrow heads and hundreds of other articles of wampum-inlaid stone and
bone have provided material over which Glidden has puzzled since he
has discovered them.
A MAP TO MORE ANCIENT BURIAL SITES
One thin piece of slate he believes to be a stone map, holes having been
drilled to indicate trails to the four main burying grounds on Santa
Catalina Island. Wampum-inlaid in four broken circles on the rim of
the urn with “gates” leading to the four points of the compass led
Glidden to believe that the burial place may be near the site of the
temple of Chinigchinich.
Fig. 11.5. Photograph of shell artifacts from Catalina Island, California, early to
mid-1900s (courtesy of Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection)
REWRITING THE HISTORY OF THE WHITE RACE
323
“The whole significance of the finds now related has not yet been
worked out by anthropologists. But the establishment as fact of the old
story of a fair race of giants in America is causing a new leaf to be
written in the textbooks. It may result finally in a revision of our ideas
as to where the white race originated—and as to how the primeval
races reached what is called the New World,” naively concluded a
reporter for the Examiner in 1929.
187 ARTIFACTS, ALSO 187 SKULLS
RECOVERED
EXAMINER, 1929
Buried in the pit with the skeletons were 187 artifacts. These, fashioned
of shell, bone and stone, included treasure boxes made of two large
clam shells cemented together with asphaltum and containing abalone
pearl pendants, carved stone beads, small stone rings, and other
trinkets. There were also small paint pots, bone needles, carved heating
stones, pipes, stone toys, and miniature canoes.
Later radiocarbon dating revealed that some of the skeletons
unearthed were seven thousand years old. For more than fifty years the
proofs pertaining to these discoveries were vigorously denied by the
University of California and the Smithsonian, but in 2011 it was finally
admitted that the evidence for these finds had been locked away from
the public in the restricted-access evidence rooms of the Smithsonian,
along with detailed field reports and hundreds of photos, as can be seen
from the following inventory chart:
RALPH GLIDDEN NEGATIVES, 1919-1923
Creator
Glidden, R. (Ralph)
Title
Ralph Glidden negatives, 1919-1923.
Phy.
Description
536 acetate negatives: black and white; 5 x 7 inches.
Bio/His
Notes
Ralph Glidden was an archaeologist and curator at the Catalina Museum of the Channel
Islands in the 1930s. He also worked for the Museum of the American Indian/Heye
Foundation.
Summary
This collection contains 536 black-and-white acetate negatives taken by Ralph Glidden
between 1919-1923. Most of the images depict scenic views and archaeological
excavations on Catalina Island, San Miguel Island, San Nicolas Island and San Clemente
Island, California. Also included are approximately 88 images of objects excavated by
Glidden; these objects are now in the collections of the National Museum of the American
Indian.
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Organization
Organized in individual sleeves; arranged by image number.
Cite as
Ralph Glidden negatives, National
Museum of the American Indian
Archives, Smithsonian Institution
(negative, slide or catalog number).
Restrictions
Access is by appointment only, Monday- Friday, 9:30 am-4:30 pm. Please contact the
archives to make an appointment.
Copyright
National Museum of the American Indian. Some images are restricted due to cultural
sensitivity. Please contact the archivist for further information.
Subject-
Topical
Excavations (Archaeology)-California
Indians of North America-California
Subject-
Geographical
California-Antiquities
San Clemente Island (Calif.)
San Miguel Island (Calif.)
San Nicolas Island (Calif.)
Santa Catalina Island (Calif.)
Form/Genre
Black-and-white negatives
Repository
Loc
National Museum of the American Indian Archives, Cultural Resources Center, 4220 Silver
Hill Road, Suitland, Maryland 20746. (tel: 301-238-1400, fax: 301-2383038, email:
nmaiarchives(S)si.edul
DOCUMENTS DISCOVERED BY MUSEUM
CURATOR REVEAL CATALINA ISLAND’S
EARLIEST HISTORY
ART DAILY, THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2012
He was a colorful character whose research into many of North
America’s earliest human settlements was both groundbreaking and
highly controversial, which made all the more remarkable the
announcement this past week that a large cache of original papers and
photographs had been discovered documenting the earliest excavations
of Catalina Island by the amateur archaeologist Ralph Glidden. Details
of the discovery were first reported in a front-page article published in
the Los Angeles Times. The article describes how a curator at the
Catalina Island Museum discovered numerous journals, personal
letters, albums, newspaper articles, and, most significantly, hundreds of
photographs that Glidden had compiled during his years of research on
the island.
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“The sheer scale of this discovery is immense,” stated John
Boraggina, the curator who discovered the collection and who has been
on the job for less than a year. “One scholar from UCLA looked at all
the documents and claimed that it represented 20 years of research.”
The archive of material provides the kind of documentation of
Glidden’s excavations that many scholars believed either did not exist
or had been lost. Found in two modestly sized boxes in the museum’s
research center, the entire archive is related to the hundreds of sites
Glidden excavated on the island between 1919 and 1928. Many of the
oldest settlements known are located on Catalina Island and date back
at least 8,000 years. Glidden was the first archaeologist granted
permission to excavate the island’s interior by William Wrigley, Jr.—
the chewing gum magnate—who virtually bought the island in 1919.
Glidden uncovered thousands of artifacts, including mortars and
pestles used for preparing food, knives of bone and stone, cooking
stones for boiling soup in baskets, f lutes made of bone, beads used as
currency, arrowheads, war clubs, and fishhooks made of shell and
weighted with stone. The artifacts reside today in the permanent
collection of the Catalina Island Museum, a museum that William
Wrigley, Jr.’s son, Philip K. Wrigley, helped to establish in 1953.
Glidden’s digs uncovered human remains often, and perhaps his
greatest discovery was an enormous ancient cemetery with hundreds of
burial sites. The archive of documents recently discovered has been
described as a “missing link” that provides written and visual
documentation of the thousands of skeletons and artifacts uncovered by
Glidden during his nearly 10 years of excavating Santa Catalina.
“The insight that the photographs alone lend into Glidden’s work is
remarkable,” Boraggina stated recently. “We had previously thought
that Glidden paid little regard to any type of scientific method when
working with human remains. But these photographs are evidence of
his attempt to document human remains during the earliest stages of
their excavation. We see a large number of undisturbed skeletons, the
majority of which have been buried in what seems to be the fetal
position. We’ve never before had this amount of evidence related to
Glidden’s work.”
“None of the Glidden archive had ever been exhibited,” Dr. Michael
De Marsche, Executive Director of the museum recently stated while
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standing before a display case now dedicated to material from the
discovery. “I assumed my position less than two years ago, and we now
know that some 20 years ago research took place on the collection, but
then it was all put in boxes and placed on a shelf. I know scholars from
other museums have asked if it might exist. But our records were so
poor that we didn’t know. We have no central catalog listing all the
material in our archive. The boxes John discovered were simply
marked ‘Glidden.’ We’re in the midst of updating and organizing
everything, but this won’t be fully accomplished for years.”
In 1924 Glidden opened the first “museum” on Catalina Island: the
Museum of the American Indian on the Channel Islands. It certainly
lived up to Glidden’s expectation that it be “unlike anything else
anywhere in this country.” He based its interior on a chapel on the
island of Malta, whose walls were decorated with motifs formed from
the bones of monks. Many of the recently discovered photographs
provide views of the museum and Glidden’s use of skeletal remains as
a macabre form of decoration. But the photographs also reveal that the
unsettling interior of his museum was a popular stop for tourists. In one
photograph, Glidden holds a skull while talking to two women dressed
in their Sunday best.
“I think this archive lends a more complex portrait of the man,”
Boraggina said while scanning the photographs. “You have to
acknowledge that Glidden exploited Native American remains in the
most insensitive manner imaginable. He certainly did not honor the
sanctity of these remains when he organized his museum. He resorted
to crass sensationalism when trying to sell tickets. On the other hand,
we now know that while excavating he attempted, at times, to subscribe
to a standard of archaeology prevalent during his day.”
Glidden’s museum closed in 1950, and in 1952, Philip Wrigley
purchased Glidden’s entire collection of remains, documents, and
artifacts and donated them to the Catalina Island Museum. The Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 granted
Native Americans the right to reclaim the remains of their ancestors
and other sacred objects. Today, museums in the United States no
longer exhibit Native American remains. “We’re in the midst of
building a new museum, which will allow us to store and study this
collection with the respect it deserves,” De Marsche said. “I hope to
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exhibit as much of our archival material and artifacts as possible. It’s
exciting to think that the day our new building opens, the Catalina
Island Museum becomes a respected center of scholarship in this
incredibly important area of our history.”
The Catalina Island Museum is Avalon’s sole institution devoted to
art, culture and the rich history of Santa Catalina Island.
Notice how they have studiously avoided mention of the giants and
the true extent of the thousands of burials?
Fig. 11.6. Avalon, California: Photograph of artifacts from Catalina Island,
California, circa 1937 by Carl Hegner (courtesy of Southwest Museum of the
American Indian Collection)
BONES FLESH OUT AN ISLAND’S HISTORY
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FILES OF MAN WHO DUG UP INDIAN
SKELETONS COULD CHANGE VIEWS OF
EARLY CATALINA LIFE
BY LOUIS SAHAGUN
_ LOS ANGELES TIMES, APRIL 2, 2012 _
The curator of the Catalina Island Museum opened the door to a musty
backroom a few weeks ago hoping to find material for an upcoming
exhibit on the World War II era. Closing the door behind him, he
trudged down a narrow aisle lined with storage boxes and bins filled
with gray photocopies of old letters, civic records, celebrity kitsch, and
dust.
“No luck,” curator John Boraggina muttered.
But as he made his way to a back corner, he noticed another row of
boxes. He carried the largest to a table, blew off the dust and lifted the
lid.
Inside were leather-bound journals and yellowing photographs
showing freshly unearthed skeletons lying on their backs or sides, or
curled as if in sleep. Many were surrounded by grinding stones, pots
and beadwork.
Several photos showed a man in soiled clothes standing tall with
spade in hand beside chaotic jumbles of bones. Boraggina recognized
him: Ralph Glidden.
The images, Boraggina soon realized, came from a time 90 years ago
that many on Santa Catalina Island had forgotten—or tried to forget.
The photos were of the work of a pseudo-scientist—some say a
huckster—who made a living unearthing Native American artifacts and
human remains for sale and trade. Glidden had ruined much of
Catalina’s Native American cultural heritage, but in the process he also
made discoveries thought lost in the passage of time.
Boraggina closed the big box and called the museum’s executive
director, Michael De Marsche. “Michael, hurry over. I discovered
something amazing,” he said. “I found Glidden’s archives.”
Minutes later, De Marsche was taking stock of enough historical
photographs and handwritten documents to fill a gallery in the 60-year-
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old museum.
In the weeks since, the contents of the boxes have grown in
importance. Researchers and scholars of California history—especially
at UCLA’s Fowler Museum, where some 200 of Glidden’s skeletons
are housed—say the discovery will probably change the understanding
of early life here and could eventually ease the anger of Native
Americans outraged by the grave-robbing of the last century.
It is not often that a small-town curator unearths modern-day clues to
a prehistoric past, but scientists believe that’s what happened here.
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12
INSIGHTS INTO ORIGINS
THE SCYTHIAN CONNECTION
In many of the reports I came across there was conjecture as to the
roots of the mound-builder race. The two top contenders posited by
various authors seem to be the ancient Cretans and the ancient
Scythians. In the following excerpt from Haywood’s history of
Tennessee, he cites the Scythian’s large stature, burial practices
involving barrows, and custom of scalping enemies as examples of
their influence.
The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, 1823
By Dr. John Haywood
When we reflect that the Scythian nations between the Danube and
the Tanais, as late as within one century of the Christian era were
of a size which astonished the southern inhabitants of Europe and
Asia; that they scalped their enemy; that they buried their dead in
heaps of earth thrown over them with such articles as were deemed
by the deceased most valuable in his lifetime; and that their tumuli,
or barrows, are yet to be seen in the plains towards the upper part
of the Irish and Jenesee and from the banks of the Volga to the lake
Baikal; we cannot refrain from the conclusion, that this skeleton
belonged to a human body of the same race, education, and notions
with those who lived on the Volga, Tanais, and Obey.
The same unknown cause, which, in the course of 2000 years,
has reduced the size of the ancient Scythians and their tribes, the
Gauls and Germans and Sarmatians has produced the same effects
here. The descendants of these giants, both in the old and new
world, agree with each other in bulk, as their ancestors did with
each other, which proves a uniform cause operating equally both in
the old and new world. The decrease in bulk seems to have kept
pace everywhere with the increase of warm temperature and with
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the abbreviation of longevity.
The giants of Hebron and Gath and those of Laconia and Italy,
whose large skeletons to this day attest that there they formerly
dwelt, compared with those now found in West Tennessee,
demonstrate that a change of climate or of some other cause has
worked a remarkable change in the human system; and with
respect to the mammoth, the megalonyx, and other animals, has
either extinguished or driven them into other and far distant
latitudes. Nature, as it grows in age, is less vigorous than at the
beginning, and its productions correspond with its debility, and the
time must come, when she, like all her productions, will give up
the ghost and work no more. But the principal use we have to make
of the skeleton before us is to discover first that he came from a
cold or northern climate and not from the south, as the primitive
aborigines did, for men of large stature were never found within
the tropics.
Second, that he must have come from the north of Europe or
Asia, because of the similarity of customs already remarked. Third,
that he probably belonged to those northern tribes, which some
centuries ago exterminated the nations that had come from the
south and were settled upon the Cumberland and its waters.
With this skeleton was found another of nearly the same size,
with the top of his head flat, and his eyes placed apparently in the
upper part of his forehead. The Aztecs or Mexicans represent their
principal divinities, as their hieroglyphical manuscripts prove, with
a head much more flattened than any that have been seen amongst
the Caribs, and they never disfigured the heads of their children.
Concerning the Unnatural Practice of Child-Boarding Skulls
But many of the southern tribes have adopted the barbarous custom
of pressing the heads of their children between two boards, in
imitation, no doubt, of the Mexican form, which, in their
estimation was beautiful, or in some way advantageous. And here
it may not be amiss to mention, that the Chileans, who lived as far
to the south of the equator, as formerly did the Scythians, Goths,
Vandals, Gauls, and Germans—on the other side of it—were men
of large stature.
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One remark may be of some use in the drawing of inferences
from the preceding facts. The skeletons, we find, are entirely under
conical mounds or, in part, consumed by fire, and under such
mounds, or entirely in shallow graves with flat rocks placed on the
edges, at the sides, and at the head and feet. They may also be
entirely above the common surface and in the conical mounds
enclosed in rocks that are placed together in the form of a box. The
skeletons may stand erect in such boxes, with the head some depth
below the surface.
To burn and cover with a mound, is Hinduic or Grecian, and
belonging to the ancient countries of Asia Minor, and probably
belonged to the aborigines of America. To cover the entire body is
Scythic. To bury in graves or in boxes is Ethiopic, Egyptian, and in
part Hebraic, the Hebrews having learned it during their residence
in Egypt, though they did not generally adopt it.
It may be concluded that the mounds over entire bodies are
Scythic; graves and boxes are Hebraic; boxes in the mounds are
Hebraic and Scythic; and the unconsumed skeletons we see here
are either pure Scythians or Hebrew Scythians, whilst all others are
Hinduic, or in other words aboriginal. The large men of the world
have always been found in the north, and they have often invaded
and broken up the people of the south. They have never been found
in the south; nor have the people of the south ever broken up their
settlements there and marched upon those of the north to expel
them from their possessions in order to make room for themselves.
The men who deposited the skeletons we are now contemplating
were of northern growth, and they came to the south to drive away
the inhabitants whom they found there and to seat themselves in
their possessions.
The Giants’ Love for Martial Music
About 18 miles east from Rogersville in the county of Hawkins in
East Tennessee was ploughed up a stone trumpet. It tapers on the
outside from either end to the middle and is there surrounded by
two rings of raised stone. The inside at each end is a hollow, of an
inch and a quarter in diameter; but at one end the orifice is not as
large as at the other. Probably the sound is shrill and sharp when
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blown from one end, and more full and sonorous when blown from
the other.
The hollow continues throughout, from the one end to the other,
and in the middle, under the rings, it is not as wide as at the ends. It
seems to have been made of hard soapstone; and when blown
through, makes a sound which may be heard perhaps two miles. It
is very smooth on the outside, but rough within.
An Ancient Hunting Horn
Probably it was used for similar purposes to those for which the
trumpet of the Israelites was used, namely to convene assemblies
and to regulate the movements of the army. On days of rejoicing it
was used to make a part of the musical sounds with which the
people were entertained. From it, perhaps, these deductions may be
made. There were no large hollow horns in the country, which
could have been used for the same purpose, and more effectually,
too, as large steer horns are now used by hunters. But a more
important question is: Whence could those who made the trumpet
have known its properties and use? They could not have attained
that knowledge by blowing through the large horns of animals
because there were none such here, or they never would have made
this stone trumpet.
“Prior to the Departure of the Israelites from Egypt, There Is
No Scriptural or Other Account of Trumpets”
Most evidently, it was conceived to be of great value; otherwise so
much time, as must necessarily have been consumed in fashioning
and hollowing it, would not have been spent for such purpose. The
makers must have learnt its use from some nation that employed
the trumpet in sounding charges, or for giving directions to march,
or to stop the pursuit of an enemy. Prior to the departure of the
Israelites from Egypt, there is no scriptural or other account of
trumpets.
In Egypt, Pharaoh followed the army of the Israelites with
chariots and horsemen, but the trumpet is not spoken of. It was
sounded on Mount Sinai, where God delivered the law to Moses;
and it is intimated that the people had never before heard the sound
of the trumpet. “The voice of the trumpet was exceedingly loud, so
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that all the people that were in the camp trembled. And all the
people saw the thundering and the lightning and the noise of the
trumpet and the mountains smoking; and when the people saw it,
they removed and stood afar off.” Afterwards it was directed that
two trumpets should be made for convening the elders and for
giving signals for the marching of the tribes.
Some were to march at one signal, and some at another. A signal
was appointed for convening the whole congregation. Sometime
afterward, the Israelites made use of trumpets for various other
purposes; but being separated by their natural institutions and
religion from all the other people of the world, soon communicated
to them the use of this instrument (Exodus, ch. 14, v. 6, 7, ch. 19,
v. 13, 16, ch. 20, v. 18).
When Bacchus overran India with an army from the west, the
use of the trumpet was not known. In the time of the Trojan War,
neither Greeks nor Trojans used the trumpet. The Trojans had in
their camp the sound of flutes and of pipes. Stentor, a man of
mighty voice, proclaimed to the army the orders which were given
by the general. In the year 14 before Christ, when Darius the Mede
crossed the Danube and invaded the Scythians, on his return,
finding the bridge broken down, which he had left, he caused an
Egyptian, remarkable for the loudness of his voice, to pronounce
with all his strength, the name of the admiral of the fleet, who
immediately answered and came to him, and made a new bridge of
boats, for his transportation. A trumpet could have been much
more effectually used, and could have sent the appointed signal to
a much greater distance.
When Xerxes invaded Greece, 478 years before Christ, no
trumpet was then used; the signal for battle was given by
torchbearers. In aftertimes it was given by drum or trumpet.
Signals also announcing any important occurrence were given by
holding up a torch of fire. Soon after the invasion of Greece by the
Persians, trumpets were used in Greece for many purposes, as well
as those relative to the motions of their armies. The Greeks
probably learned it from the Phoenicians. The dispersed Israelites,
either those carried into captivity by the Assyrians or those of the
Chaldean captivity have imparted the knowledge of the trumpet
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and its uses, to the people from whom it came, mediately or
immediately, to the Americans who made the trumpet in question.
The communication must have been made in or subsequent to the
sixth century before the Christian era, possibly several centuries
afterwards. But still it furnishes an additional and strong evidence
of the fact inferred, namely: that the trumpet and its uses came
either mediately or immediately from the countries of the east,
where the trumpet was first used.
Thence they may have obtained the knowledge of it through
various nations; or possibly were the descendants of the very
Israelites, who were removed by the Assyrians to the east and
north of the Caspian sea and of the Euxine; and who built on the
east of the former, the city of Charazen, named after a city of the
same name on the east of the river Jordan and the city of
Samarsand, originally, before the name was corrupted, called
Samaria, after the city of that name from which the ten tribes were
carried into captivity.
Near to this mound is a cave, which contained, at the time of the
first settlements by the whites, a great number of human skulls
without any other appearance of human bones near them. Baal and
Ashteroth, spoken of in scripture, were the sun and moon. The
latter being a female, was also called the Queen of Heaven, Venus,
Urania, Succoth-bemoth, Diana, Hecate, Lucena, Celestes and was
represented with breasts, sometimes all over, to signify that she is
the supplier of the juices that are essential to animal and vegetable
existence. Mr. Earle has lately made another and more scrutinizing
examination of this mound, by which have been brought to light
several particulars of great consequence in this discussion.
Situated near Sulphur Springs—Mining in the Area
His report follows: This mound is situated in a plain and is
surrounded by hills, which enclose from 75 to 80 acres of flat land,
with three fine sulphur springs, and at the junction of four roads
leading to different parts of the state, and considerably traveled,
and about two miles from Cragfont, the residence of General
Winchester. This is the place where Spencer and his friend Mr.
Brake spent the winter of 1779 and 1780.
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The trunk of the tree, which they inhabited during this hard
winter, is just visible above the ground. The diameter is 13 feet.
The mound measures, beginning at the northwest corner, running
east, four and a half poles to the northeast corner; then the
horizontal projection from the principal mound, north one pole;
then east 11 poles, to the southeast corner; then west 11 poles, to
the original mound; thence with the original mound west 4 poles;
thence north 4 poles, to the northwest corner before mentioned.
The elevation to the top of the chief mound is 2 poles; its
diameter 2 poles, in the center, and from three to four feet. The
declivity of the mound is an angle of about 45 degrees. A tree of
considerable size is yet growing on the mound, and a decayed
stump of 2 feet in diameter, but too much decayed to count the
annual rings or circles in it.
An entrenchment and circumvallation encloses 40 acres and
encircles this mound and others of lesser size. There is also a
circumvallatory parapet, five feet high. On the parapet are small
tumuli like watch-towers, about 95 feet distant from one to the
other. In the line of circumvallation, and from each fifth tumulus,
there is an average distance of 45 or from thence to 180 feet to the
next one. It thus continues around the whole breastwork.
Mr. Earle dug into the parapet in several places, from two to
three feet in depth, and found ashes, pottery ware, flint, mussel
shells, coal, and so forth. On the outside of the entrenchment are a
number of graves. In several different places, flat stones are set up
edge-wise, enclosing skeletons buried from 12 to 18 inches under
the surface.
Three hundred yards distant from the great mound, on the
southwest side of the entrenchment, is a mound of 50 yards in
circumference, and six in height. In the opposite direction, from
this to the northeast stands another smaller mound, and of the same
dimensions as the one last mentioned. So that the three stand upon
a line, from northeast to southwest, in the same order as the
trimurti arc placed even to this day in the temple of Juggernaut.
The next (in size) principal mound was within the intrenchment
in a southeast course from the great mound and about 170 yards
distant, circumference 90 yards, elevation 100 feet. Thirty-five
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yards distant, in a southwest course, is a small tumulus, two thirds
as large as the one last mentioned. At the same distance, on the
northeast corner of the great mound, is another of the same size as
that last mentioned. Each of these tumuli hath a small one of about
half its size in the center between them and the great mound. The
earth in which this mound was constructed, appears to have been
taken, not from one place, leaving a cavity in the earth, but evenly
fixing all the surface around the mound.
Mounds are spaced by intervals of five. In about 200 yards
distant, extending from the mound, the soil has been taken off to a
considerable depth. The corn, which is planted within this place,
yields but a small increase. The tumuli upon the parapet project
beyond it, both inwards and outwards: the summit of these being
15 feet above the summit of the parapet, and 5 feet above the
surface of the common earth. They are 10 or 12 feet in diameter at
the base.
Between every fifth tumulus and the next tumulus, which is the
first of the next five, there is a large interstice. One of the intervals
to the north, is 180 feet wide. The next toward the west, is 145 feet.
The summit of each tumulus diverges from the base toward a point
but at the top is flat and wide enough for two or three men to stand
on. The common distance between the tumuli is 95 feet, without
any variation. The entrenchment is on the inside of the parapet all
around. From it the parapet has been made.
Alternating Levels of Ash and Earth
Mr. Earle commenced his excavation on the north side of the
principal mound, ten feet above the common surface of the earth,
and penetrated to the center of the mound in a cavity of about 7
feet in breadth. Two feet from the summit was found a stratum of
ashes 14 inches through to a stratum of earth. On the east side of
the cavity the sania stratum of ashes was oily from three to four
inches in depth. The diggers then came to the common earth,
which was only two feet through to the same substance, ashes.
Then again commenced the layers of ashes from one to two inches
through to the earth; then again to ashes; and so the layers
continued alternately, as far as they proceeded. The layers of ashes
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were counted as far as the excavation descended, and amounted to
28.
The earth between the layers of ashes was of a peculiar
description: yellow and grey. The ashes were of a blackish color.
The yellow earth was of a saponaceous and flexible nature. The
grey was of a similar kind to that of the common earth.
At eight feet from the top of the mound, they came to a grave,
which had the appearance of having once been an ancient
sepulcher. The earth caved in as the diggers sunk the cavity. The
cause of this was soon ascertained to be the skeleton of a child in
quite a decayed state, but sufficiently preserved to ascertain the
size. Doctor Green and Doctor Saunders of Cairo examined the
bones and pronounced them to be the bones of a child. This
skeleton was lying on three cedar piles, five feet and a half in
length, and considerably decayed but sound at the heart.
The head of the child lay towards the east, facing the west, with a
jug made of sandstone, lying at its feet. This jug or bottle was of
the ordinary size of modern gallon bottles, such as are commonly
manufactured at Pittsburgh, with the exception that the neck is
longer, and there is an indentation upon its side, indicating that a
strap was used to carry it.
The grave was on the east side of the cavity, eight feet from the
center of the mound north. The excavation from the top of the
mound; perpendicularly into the earth was 13 feet. At the time they
found the grave as above mentioned, they also found other graves,
and small pieces of decayed human bones, and bones of animals,
amongst which was the jaw bone with the tusk attached to it, of
some unknown animal. The jaw bone is about a foot long, having
at the extremity a tusk one inch and a half in length. The tusk is in
the same form as that of Cuvier’s mastodon, but has more
curvature.
Having been accidentally broken, it was found to be hollow. The
jaw bone has in it at this time, two grinders, like those of
ruminating animals, with an empty socket for one other of the
same size, and one large single tooth. Towards the extremity of the
jaw and near to the tusk, is another small socket, calculated for a
tooth of minor magnitude. This jaw bone was found at the depth of
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18 feet from the surface of the earth. They also found the bones of
birds, arrow points of flint, pottery ware, some of which was
glazed, mussel shells and trinkets, coal, isinglass (mica), burnt
corncobs.
The further they penetrated downwards, the greater were the
quantities of flat stone, found all standing edgewise, promiscuously
placed, with the appearance of once having underwent the action
of fire, and finding at every few inches, a thin stratum of ashes and
small pieces of human bones. At 19 feet they dug up part of a
corncob, and small pieces of cedar completely rotted.
MOUND BUILT PRECISELY TO THE CARDINAL POINTS
Despite the fact that astronomical and geographic alignments have been
studied at major mound sites like Cahokia, similar studies on lesser-
known mound sites have never been performed. That is why this
account is so interesting. In it Haywood notes, “This mound was built
precisely to the cardinal points, as were the mounds of Mexico, the
pyramids of Egypt, and the Chaldean tower of Babel. Like them, its top
was flattened. The image, which once stood on its top, was similar to
that of Ashtoreth, or the moon.” This mention of an Ashtoreth-like
moon image that was found on top of the mound is tantalizing, to say
the least. Now let’s return to Haywood’s narrative.
We will now make a few remarks. This mound was built precisely
to the cardinal points, as were the mounds of Mexico, the pyramids
of Egypt, and the Chaldean tower of Babel. Like them, its top was
flattened. The image, which once stood on its top, was similar to
that of Ashtoreth, or the moon. Those who worshipped stood on
the east of the image on the platform and held their heads towards
her. The ditch was probably dug with metallic tools. That and the
parapet perhaps represented the year. The five tumuli represented
the five days into which the Mexicans divided time. The
interstices, the four quarters into which each Mexican month was
divided. The whole composing the 72 quintals that made up the
year, or 360 days. The wider passages to the north and south, east
and west, like the Hindu temple of Seringham, which is heretofore
described represented the four quarters or seasons of the year. The
walls around the ancient temples of India are passed by passages
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precisely to the cardinal points.
The three mounds in a line, the larger being in the middle,
represent the trimurti, or three great deities of India, upon all three
of which idols were probably once placed, as they are now placed
in the temple of Juggernaut and are intended to represent EOA, or
Ye-Ho-Wah: whence in every country in Asia, including the
Hebrews, came the sacred reverence for the number three, which is
so apparent in all their solemnities. Part of this name, the A and O,
or the alpha and omega, yet signify with us, the beginning and end
of all things with three attributes, which is, which was, and which
is to come. This was a part of the description, which belonged to
the triune great one whom idolatry caused mankind to lose sight of,
whilst those who only worshipped a spiritual God, preserved it in
its original purity. But in every country, whether corrupted by
idolatry or not, proceeds from the great, original, and uncorrupted
religion, which emanated immediately and directly from EOA or
the great good spirit.
It cannot be conceived for a moment, that here was a fortification
for military purposes. For when did ever any such work have so
many passages, so regularly and equally placed. The worshippers
of the heavenly hosts were the greatest cultivators of astronomy,
whilst the only religion of the world opposed to them, the Vatican
raged the contemplation of those objects of her heathenish
adoration. They involved in the circle of their adorables, all the
constellations and planets.
THE MOUNDS REPRESENT THE PLEIADES
Modern readers are familiar with the sensation that was caused when
Robert Bauval likened the arrangement of the Great Pyramid complex
to Orion’s belt. In this account, which is almost two hundred years old,
Haywood notes a similar stellar arrangement in the placement of the
mounds he is examining in Tennessee, only this time in relation to the
Pleiades.
In some places we see a mound and five or six smaller ones
around, which seem to represent the Pleiades, and sometimes other
luminaries seem to be represented. These layers of ashes are unlike
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those in the time of the Trojan War over which were raised
mounds of earth, after the bodies of Patroclus and Hector were
consumed in them, and their bones taken away and put into an urn.
SIGNS OF HUMAN SACRIFICE
Many of the bodies that have been exhumed from mounds across the
country show signs that they were ritually burned before being covered
in layers of dirt and ash. In other bodies from mounds, notes Haywood,
evidence of decapitation and flaying have also been found.
But the strata of ashes, at intervals from top to bottom, with human
bones intermixed, show that there were human victims committed
to the flames, after decapitation and removal of the skull to the
neighboring cave, where it was laid up in darkness for the use of
the deity. The black ashes denote the consumption of tobacco, the
only incense in America, which they could offer, in which also was
consumed the consecrated victim. A heated fire of solid wood
would have consumed bone and all.
The great number of graves on the outside, show that the people
neither usually buried in rounds, nor usually consumed dead bodies
on the funeral pile. The skeleton of the child found within shows
that it was a privilege peculiar to his family to be buried there,
whilst the other ranks of men were buried without the
circumvallation. He was very probably one of the children of the
sun.
The earth taken from the surface, within the circumvallation, was
holy and consecrated; it was earth impregnated by the beams of the
sun, and must have been removed by a great number of hands,
compelled by despotic power to obedience. When placed on the
expiring embers of sacrificial fire, the enclosures of all such
mounds are circular, or for the most part are meant to represent
possibly the course of the revolving year, and to make upon them
the divisions of time that the sun describes in his progress. It is
easy to compare what he found in this mound and about it, with the
collection of scriptural passages, before stated, and to see how far
there is accordance between them or not. And therefore it is
needless for the writer any further to pursue the subject.
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BLOND-HAIRED SKELETON BURIED IN CAVE
This account by Haywood of a skeleton of a blond-haired girl found in
a cave near Carthage is but one of many similar accounts I discovered
in reports from across the United States. In this case, the girl’s hair was
covered by a mantle of feathers.
The section upon the literal inscriptions of Tennessee gives one
instance of a skeleton in a cave near Carthage, the hair of which
was yellow. The hair of the female covered with the curious mantle
of feathers in the section of manufactures, which was found in a
cave in White county, was of a yellow cast, and very fine. It is
evident, that these did not belong to Indians of the same races with
those of the present day.
SECRET ROOM IN A CAVE IS DISCOVERED
Haywood says that in a cave that was found about eleven miles north of
Cairo, Tennessee, workmen had to open two secret passages before
they discovered a twenty-five-feet-square room that contained the
bodies of a man, a woman, and a child. They were said to be auburn¬
haired and blue-eyed and of normal height, and the man was covered
by fourteen deerskin blankets. The bodies were enclosed in pyramidal
baskets.
Near the confines of Smith and Wilson counties, on the south side
of Cumberland river about 11 miles above Cairo, on the waters of
Smith’s Fork of Cany Fork, is a cave, the aperture into which is
very small.
The workmen in the cave enlarged the entrance and went in; and
digging in the apartment, next to the entrance, after removing the
dirt and using it, they came, upon the same level with the entrance,
to another small aperture, which also they entered and went
through, when they came into a narrow room, 25 feet square.
Everything here was neat and smooth. The room seemed to have
been carefully preserved for the reception and keeping of the dead.
In this room, near about the center, were found sitting in baskets
made of cane three human bodies; the flesh entire, but a little
shriveled, and not much so. The bodies were those of a man, a
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female, and a small child. The complexion of all was very fair and
white, without any intermixture of the copper color. Their eyes
were blue; their hair auburn, and fine. The teeth were very white;
their stature was delicate, about the size of the whites of the
present day. The man was wrapped in 14 dressed deer skins. The
14 deer skins were wrapped in what those present called blankets.
They were made of bark, like those found in the cave in White
county. The form of the baskets, which enclosed them, was
pyramidal, being larger at the bottom, and declining to the top. The
heads of the skeletons from the neck were above the summits of
the blankets.
THE WELL SHOWS SIGNS OF ENGINEERING
The walled water tanks found in association with the mounds described
in the next extract showed signs of advanced engineering, which
Haywood attributes to Hindu, Mesopotamian, or Judean influence.
The remarks, which offer themselves upon these mounds, are not
only that the doctrine of triplicity here is very prominent, but also
that the well, or tank, for holding of water must have been
constructed with peculiar art probably upon the plan that the Hindu
tanks were, and those of Mesopotamia and Judea were in ancient
times. But the most material consideration is the uses to which the
waters of the tank were applied. Is it probable that the inhabitants
of the country lived upon this consecrated ground, upon which
stood their temples and gods? If not, the waters of the tank were
for sacred uses; for ablutions and purifications; another great
symptom of the Hindu ritual. It is a remarkable truth that the same
law of defilement and ablutions has actually existed amongst the
Hindus from times of the remotest antiquity, which Moses
delivered to the Hebrews. What the Mosaic law was is stated in
various scriptural passages and retains only such rites observed by
the Hindus and Egyptians as were proper for the Hebrews in the
new countries and climates in which they were about to settle.
A STANDING STONE MARKS A BURIAL
Standing stones mark many mound-builder burial sites. In this report by
Haywood from Cany Fork, about fourteen miles from Sparta, a
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standing stone marked the burials of several skeletons that were said to
be about six and a half feet in height, with bones that were thicker than
normal and with longer teeth and larger skulls than is considered
normal.
On the Cany Fork of Cumberland, 13 or 14 miles from Sparta in a
southwesterly direction, Mr. Tilford observed a stone standing
erect, the top being about a foot above the ground, the width a foot,
and extending to a depth of a foot in the ground. He moved it from
its position and dug in, and discovered, about twelve inches under
the surface, some bones of a human skeleton. He took up several.
They were larger than those of men of common stature,
indicating that the whole skeleton would be six feet three or four
inches in length. They were thicker than bones of the same
denomination ordinarily are. The teeth were in a state of
preservation as far as the enamel reached, but those parts which
entered the socket were in a state of decay. The teeth were longer
than those of an ordinary man. The skull was larger in the same
proportion, and by the operations of time had become thinner than
skulls usually are.
Hence was inferred the great antiquity of the grave; though,
perhaps, as correct an inference would be, the northern formation
and growth of the skull, far from the vertical rays of the sun, which
usually thicken the skull when not defended by hats or bonnets or
mitres. A vast number of periwinkles lay near the grave and around
it, spread over two or three acres ground. They are supposed to
have been brought from the Cany Fork, which is about half a mile
from the spot, but they are of much larger size than any that are
found at this time on that river.
The thigh bone, when there was an attempt to move it, fell into
dust.
EVIDENCE FOR GREAT ANTIQUITY
A vast majority of the mounds examined in Haywood’s report had trees
growing out of them that were already hundreds of years old. In
addition, when workers unearthed bodies, the bones often fell to dust
the minute they were exposed to the open air.
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These latter circumstances are taken as concurrent evidences of
great antiquity. The grave was on the summit of a high bluff, rising
from the river to the spot. The trees near it were of such large size
as any in the adjacent forest, and at a small distance were some
mounds on which the timber was of equal size. A part of the skull,
when exposed to the air, was quickly dissolved into dust.
In this grave Mr. Tilford found, near where the neck of the
skeleton was, a great number of beads, some of them adhering
closely together in a circular shape, which showed that they once
encircled the neck. Others were separated. He took up 260 of them
and left a considerable number more, which he did not remove.
EVIDENCE OF IVORY WORK AND FINE DRILLS
As noted by Haywood, one of the skeletons unearthed at this burial site
had a necklace around his neck made from finely worked ivory beads
that were drilled lengthwise through the center in order to
accommodate a rope or chain to thread the beads into a necklace. Two
hundred and sixty of these ivory beads were used to make this one
necklace alone.
One was larger than all the rest, in the shape of a barrel, bored
through the center from one end to the other, one half of an inch in
length and about one half that length in diameter, supposed to have
been placed on a string which connected the whole, at the lower
part, so as to divide one half of the beads above, from the other
half above. This bead, when cut on the surface, is very smooth, of
a whitish color, inclining by a small shade towards a pale yellow,
and very much resembles ivory.
Fine longitudinal veins are visible on the surface, and it is the
opinion of good judges, that they are made of a species of ivory.
The other beads are circular, all of the like materials that compose
the large bead. Some of them are of greater diameter than the
others and some of greater width from the one side to the other.
The diameter of the larger ones is about one fourth of an inch; the
width of the exterior of the circle, about a third of the length of the
diameter. The side of the one adjoining the side of its neighbor,
when connected by a string, appears to have been made smoother
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by friction than when first formed.
It is as smooth and ungranulated as an ivory comb; in some
instances, however, showing the unevenness of the cut made by the
tool, which originally separated the bead from the mass it was
taken from. In some instances the bead, from the hole in the center
to the exterior of the circle, appears by friction to have removed
the width of the exterior from one side to the other, so as to make it
unequal to the opposite exterior of the circle; whence is inferred
the long time it had been used before the death of the wearer.
MADE OF THE FINEST AND BEST QUALITY IVORY
The ivory used to make these beads was thought to come from
mastodon or alligator teeth. Haywood reported that the beads were
examined by Dr. Throchmorlin of Sparta and were declared to be of the
“finest and best quality.”
The materials of which they are composed are probably not the
product of Tennessee; though it is possible, they may have been
taken from the tooth of the mastodon or alligator.
This writer, with the cordon of beads before him, in order to
avoid the possibility of mistake caused them to be submitted to the
inspection of Dr. Throchmorlin of Sparta, whose uncommon
intelligence makes him particularly well qualified to decide upon
the question of whether the materials be of stone or some other
substance.
His decision: that unquestionably they are of ivory of the finest
and best quality. The dingy coating, which obscured the beads, was
cleared by his experiments, from one of them, and it then appeared
to be a beautiful white, with the degree of shade, which
characterizes and softens the ivory color. The whole chain thus
brightened, must have formerly exhibited a very superb
appearance.
From Whence Came This Giant?
Upon the contemplation of this discovery, the inquisitive mind is
impelled irresistibly to ask from whence came this gigantic
skeleton, the chain of which he wore and the ivory beads that
compose it? His size and the thinness of his skull prove that he was
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from the north and probably of that race of huge stature which, in
the time of the Roman Empire, so much excited the wonder of
their writers; and which, in the decline of the empire, spread
desolation, ruin, and darkness over its whole extent.
Of the Religion of the Aborigines of Tennessee
Let us first take a view of the aboriginal religion of Tennessee, so
far as it is to be collected from the ancient signs, which have been
left us, and which are fairly referable to this topic. These are suns
and moons painted upon rocks; marks or tokens of triplicity; the
cross; mounds; images; human sacrifices; the lingam; the dress of
the images; conch shells; and vestiges of the sanctity of the number
seven.
Of the Sun and Moon Painted upon Rocks
About two miles below the road, which crosses Harpeth River,
from Nashville to Charlotte, is a bend of the river, and in the bend
is a large mound, 30 or 40 feet high, and a number of smaller ones
near it, which will be particularly described here-after.
About six miles from it is a large rock, on the side of the river,
with a perpendicular face of 70 or 80 feet altitude. On it, below the
top some distance, and on the side, are painted the sun and moon in
yellow colors, which have not faded since the white people first
knew it.
The figure of the sun is six feet in diameter: that of the moon is
of the old moon. The sun and moon are also painted on a high rock
on the side of the Cumberland River in a spot where several
ladders placed upon each other could not reach; and which is also
inaccessible except by ropes let down the summit of the rock to the
place where the painting was performed. This is near the residence
of Mr. Dozun; and it is affirmed by a person of good credit, that by
climbing from tree to tree, he once got near enough to take a near
view of this painting, and that with it, on the rock, were literal
characters, which did not belong to the Roman alphabet; but at this
time, 1822, for he looked again lately, the paint has so-far faded as
to make the form of these characters indistinguishable.
The sun is also painted on a high rock, on the side of the
Cumberland River, six or seven miles below Clarksville; and it is
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said to be painted also at the junction of the Holstein and
Frenchbroad rivers, above Knoxville, in East Tennessee. Also on
Duck River, below the bend called the Devil’s Elbow, on the west
side of the river, on a bluff: and on a perpendicular flat rock facing
the river, 20 feet below the top of the bluff, and 60 feet above the
water out of which the rock rises, is the painted representation of
the sun in red and yellow colors, six feet in circumference, yellow
on the upper side and a yellowish red on the lower.
The colors are very fresh and unfaded. The rays both yellow and
red are represented as darting from the center. It has been spoken
of ever since the river was navigated, and has been there from time
immemorial. No one has been able since the white people knew it
to approach the circle either from above or below. The circle is a
perfect one.
Neat, Elegant, Inaccessible Paintings
The painting is done in the most neat and elegant style. It can be
seen at the distance of half a mile. The painting on Big Harpeth,
before spoken of is more than 80 feet from the water, and 30 or 40
below the summit. All these paintings are in unfading colors, and
on parts of the rock inaccessible to animals of every description
except the fowls of the air.
The painting is neatly executed and was performed at an
immense hazard of the operator. It must have been for a sacred
purpose and as an object of adoration. What other motive was
capable of inciting to a work so perilous, laborious, and expensive
as those paintings must have been? From whence came the
unfading dyes and the skilled artist capable to execute the work?
By what means was he let down and placed near enough to
operate? And for what reward did he undertake so dangerous a
work? When executed, of what use could it be to any one, unless to
see and to worship?
Taken in connection with the mounds, which are in the vicinity,
the high places upon which, in the old world, the worshippers of
the sun performed their devotional exercises, there can be but little
difficulty in perceiving that these paintings had some relation to
the adoration of that luminary, the god of the Egyptians, Hindus,
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and Phoenicians, and the great god of the Mexicans and Natchez,
and of the ancient inhabitants west of the Mississippi.
Of Triplicity
In White county, in West Tennessee, was dug up a few years ago,
in an open temple, situated on the Cany Fork of Cumberland river,
a flagon designed into the shape of three distinct and hollow heads,
joined to the central neck of the vessel, by short thick tubes,
leading from each respective occupant. It was made of a light,
yellow and compact clay, intimately intermixed with small broken
fragments, and dust of powdered carbon of lime, and in a state of
crystallization.
The Use of Quart Measurements from Extreme Antiquity
This vessel held a quart. Its workmanship is well executed. The
heads are perfectly natural and display a striking resemblance of
the Asiatic countenance. None of the minor parts have been
attended to, though a small oval prominence somewhat towards the
top of each head is probably meant to represent a knot of hair.
Ancient Heads of Different Races and Classes
In other respects they appear bold. Each face is painted in a
different manner, and strongly resembles the modes by which the
Hindus designate their different castes. One of the faces is slightly
covered all over with red ochre, having deep blotches of the same
paint on the central part of each cheek. The second face has a
broad streak of brown ochre across the forehead, and another
running parallel with the same, enveloping the eyes, and extending
as far as the ears. The third face has a streak of yellow ochre,
which surrounds and extends across the eyes, running from the
center at right angles, down the nose to the upper lip; whilst
another broad streak passes from each ear, along the lower jaw and
chin.
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Fig.12.1. These are the purported remains of radioactive skeletons of Mohenjo-
daro, Pakistan, dating to around 2000 to 2500 BCE.
A PROPOSED CONNECTION WITH THE HINDU RELIGION
In White County, Tennessee, face jugs were discovered that “display a
striking resemblance of the Asiatic countenance.” Haywood noted face
painting and lines on the cheeks and forehead that bear a striking
similarity to caste marks used by the Hindu religion to mark social
standing and religious status. It is interesting that face jugs of extreme
antiquity were discovered in this area, as it is common to this day in
this part of the South to throw face jugs that can still be bought in this
area’s pottery shops.
Upon this image the following remarks suggest themselves: The
Hindus have various marks, by which they paint their faces to
designate the different casts and to distinguish amongst the same
castes those who are the peculiar votaries of certain gods. Mr.
Dubois says they use only three colors, red, black, and yellow.
“Probably the face, which now seems to be covered with brown
ochre, was originally black,” says Mr. Clifford. “If it was a
metallic paint, as the other colors certainly are, the black, having
an admixture of iron, would certainly change from the lapse of
time, and become what to all appearance it now is: a dark brown
ochre. The other two colors, being native minerals usually found in
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the earth, are not subject to change. If so, these colors were
originally the same as those used in Hindustan.” Mr. Dubois
mentions that the Hindus draw three or four horizontal lines
between the eyebrows, whilst others describe a perpendicular line
from the top of the forehead to the root of the nose. Some northern
Brahmans apply the marks to either jaw, meaning probably the
same sort of line above described in the face painted with yellow
ochre, as extending from the ears, along the lower jaw, to the chin.
He says further, that the Brahmans draw a horizontal line around
the forehead to denote that they have bathed and are pure. The
vessel described, Mr. Clifford thought, was intended for sacred
uses. It being found within one of the circumvallatory temples is
evidence in favor of this supposition. It would certainly not have
been a convenient vessel for any domestic purpose. The angular
position of the heads; with respect to the neck of the flagon, must
have prevented its being emptied of any liquid, by other means
than a complete inversion.
The contents of two of the heads might be discharged by an
inclined position with some difficulty and much gargling. But to
empty the other, the neck must become vertical. The ancients were
unacquainted with goblets, pitchers, and decanters, as intermediate
vessels. They used large jars or vases to hold their liquors for safe
keeping or carriage, and poured the contents into bowls or horns,
from which they drank.
Our aborigines were hardly more refined. And whilst the small
size of the flagon precludes the idea of its being a vessel for
deposits of liquids, its shape plainly indicates that it could not have
been used for a drinking vessel. As the ancients always completely
inverted the vessel from which they poured their libations, it is
reasonable to suppose that this flagon was intended for the same
purpose; and that the three heads, with the different marks of castes
might designate the various orders of men for which such libations
were made.
If so, the evidence is most directly connected to the identity of
religion professed by the Hindus and the aborigines of Tennessee.
No fabulous circumstance or train of thought, could have
occasioned such striking similarity in the paints and modes of
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applying them, in order to distinguish the different orders of men
in their respective nations. If, however, the flagon is not a vessel of
libation, the fact of its having three heads, possessing Asiatic
features, and painted as before stated, is certainly a strong evidence
of Asiatic origination. Brahma, one of the three principal gods of
the Hindus, was represented with a triple head. From the remotest
antiquity it is proved from his colossal statue in the cave of
Elephanta. Numerous Hindu idols on the island of Java have three
heads. This character in the image of their gods was very common
as is proved by a number of them delineated by Mr. Raffle, in the
second volume of his history.
Hebrew Cherubim with Three Faces,
Also Baal Shalisha Has Three Faces
Some of the Hebrew cherubim are represented with three faces.
Baal Shalisha, or the god of triplicity—or the deity whose image is
divided into three distinctions, yet remaining combined in one
whole—was a common emblem, and still maintains itself in India.
INDIANS OF CAROLINA KNEW THE WORLD WAS ROUND
Engraved on one of the medallions found in association with a mound-
builder burial in North Carolina is an image of a triple-headed goddess
holding a round globe of the world in one of her hands. In the following
extract, John Haywood posits this as proof of contact with Asia, as well
as proof that these ancient explorers had knowledge that the earth was
round.
In the same temple of Elephanta before mentioned is another
triple-formed divinity, with three faces, and three arms; in one
hand holding a globe; a proof that the ancients of India, as well as
the Indians of Carolina, knew that the world was round.
On a medal of Syracuse, is a figure with three heads, extremely
like the symbols adopted by the Hindus, and resembling much the
Indian figures. The famous Siberian medal hath three heads, and
three pair of arms. The resemblance of the heads, to the deities of
India, leaves no doubt of the origin of the emblem. It is seated on a
tower. The heads hold various symbolic articles, among which the
ring is clearly distinguishable.
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The Hindus celebrate the first day of the year for three days. At
the winter solstice they keep a festival for three days. Three
prostrations are made in presence of distinguished persons. When a
child is named by the Brahmans, and the mantras or prayers are
made, the father calls him three times by the name he has received.
The Brahmans wear a cord over the shoulders, of three thick twists
of cotton, called the triple cord. The threads are not twisted
together, but are separate from one another. On the third day of the
ceremonies for investing with the triple cord, the young Brahman,
his father and mother seat themselves upon three little stools.
When carrying a body to the funeral pile, they stop with it three
times on the way. The chief of the funeral goes three times around
the funeral pile; and when the body is consumed, the four attending
Brahmans go around it three times. When a minyam is made, he
takes with him three articles; a cane of a bamboo with seven knots,
a gourd filled with water, and an antelope’s skin. He drinks of the
water in the pitcher. The sacredness of this number was recognized
in Chaldea, for the Hebrew children were to be instructed three
years. Daniel kneeled upon his knees three times a day. Amongst
the Hebrews themselves, it was received, and had as firmly grown
into a custom with them, as it was established in India.
The Cross and Its Ancient Association with the Cosmic Bird of
Cygnus
It is not recollected that the cross has been found in Tennessee
except upon the small vessels buried with the pigmy skeletons in
White county. The ring or cross in ancient Persian medals was
represented as sacred symbols, and had a commemorative
intention. In one place the circle is surrounded by 19 points
resembling jewels, and it unites in a cross. There are creatures cut
on rocks at Persepolis, of Baal and Moloch, on horseback. Moloch
has a club in his left hand, holding a large ring in his right hand.
The ring, in this instance, is the symbol of unity. Amorsea, Baal,
and Moloch, reconciled, united. The family of Isaiah was early
divided into two parties; one called of the sun, the other of the
moon. They boasted of their divinity each to the other; and to
prove their superiority, each fought the other’s divinity. This
shows their reconciliation. These are the most ancient idols.
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A medal of Demetrius the second, dated in the 168th year of the
Leleucida, has on it the representation of a goddess, a Tyrian and
Sidonian Venus, standing giving directions. Her right hand and
arm extended; in her left, she holds a cross with a long stem to it.
These without any further multiplication of instances prove
sufficiently that in ancient time in Asia Minor, Persia, and India,
the ring was symbolic of union, and the cross a sacred symbol.
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CONCLUSION
Now that you have reviewed the evidence for a former race of giants in
North America, I invite you to consider both their legends and their
reality. There are legends of giants in many cultures, such as the Titans
of Greece or Goliath in the Bible. In fact, the Bible has several
references to giants, known as the Rephaim, Anakim, Zuzim,
Sepherim, and Nephilim, as in the following quote from Numbers
13:32-33: “The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land
that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in
it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of
Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as
grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”
Could it truly be that all these cultural legends are mere legends—
with no basis in fact? Are these legends just the result of a human need
to create something “larger than ourselves”? I think not. In these pages
and pages of documentation we have now seen the American giants’
widespread presence, their sophisticated cultures, their royal status,
their Caucasian genetic links, and signs of cultural links to other areas
of the globe long before Columbus.
The fact that almost no one is aware of these giants today is a telling
comment on the role played by the Smithsonian Institution and other
institutions of higher learning, on which we rely to explore, preserve,
and offer insights into our heritage, perhaps most especially those
aspects that hint at broader horizons. What do the roles these
institutions have played in this matter teach us about the role of bias in
all studies of a supposedly academic or scientific nature? What would
be the reason for not keeping this information in the public eye?
And what have we lost by losing our collective memory of these
early, extraordinary inhabitants of America? What insights into not
only American but also global prehistory might their existence offer
us?
It is natural to want to point fingers in a situation like this, but the
reality is that no one who is presently at the Smithsonian probably has
356
the faintest idea about the history of the giants presented here. In fact, if
their academic indoctrination has been rigorous enough, they will
probably still remain unmoved by the overwhelming evidence
presented in this book.
This should come as no surprise to those who are aware of the 1,200-
ton stones in Baalbek, the advanced mathematics and engineering of
the Great Pyramids, or the stories of Atlantis, as related by Plato. We
live in an age where we are hypnotized by our own ignorance, acting as
if atomic energy and digital electronics are the heights of human
achievement, patting ourselves on the back that we are the best and the
brightest. One might call it hubris; wiser minds would call it cultural
myopia and adolescent grandstanding.
The stories of myth and antiquity are real. There were other ages as
great as, or greater than, our own, and whatever we have accomplished
was built on the shoulders of giants.
357
Fig. C.l. “There were giants upon the earth in those days”—Genesis 6:4. The
skeletons of Charles Byrne (1761-1783), “The Irish Giant,” and Caroline
Crachami (ca. 1815-1824), “The Sicillian Dwarf,” from The Strand Magazine,
published in 1896.
358
FOOTNOTES
*1 Powell then goes on to definitively state that there are no foreign
influences to be seen or studied in relation to the pueblo- and mound¬
building cultures of the Americas that are believed to precede the
American Indians. In relation to his dismissive comments regarding
any connections to the “lost tribes” from the Old World, it is
interesting to note that Powell was the son of a preacher in Palmyra,
New York, who lost his flock to Mormon missionaries.
*2 See The Discoveries of Aaron Wright .
*3 The negative of the sketch of the Inscribed Head was somehow
flipped over in producing Alrutz so that it appears there in mirror
image. The profile should face left, not right. With this correction the
Hebrew letters have their proper orientation and may be read right to
left.
359
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adovasio, James M. The First Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeology’s
Greatest Mystery. New York: Random House, 2002.
Davis, Edwin, and Ephraim Squier. Ancient Monuments of the
Mississippi Valley: Comprising the Results of Extensive Original
Surveys and Explorations. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution, 1848.
Drier, Roy Ward, and Octave Joseph DuTemple. Prehistoric Copper
Mining in the Lake Superior Region. Published privately by the
authors, 1961.
Fell, Barry, America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World. New
York: Pocket Books, 1989.
Haywood, John. The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee: Up
to the First Settlements Therein by the White People, in the Year
1768. Nashville, Tenn.: George Wilson, 1823.
Heckewelder, John Gottlieb Ernestus. An Account of the History,
Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited
Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States 1819. New York: Arno
Press, 1971, copyright 1876.
Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca. Life among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs
and Claims. Boston: Cupples, Upham, and Co.; New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1883.
Howe, Henry. Historical Collection of Ohio. Cincinnati, Ohio: E.
Morgan and Co., 1847.
Howley, J. P. The Beothucks or Red Indians. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1915.
Kohl, Johann Georg. Reisen im Nordwesten der Vereinigten Staaten
[Travels in Northwestern Parts of the United States]. New York: D.
Appleton & Co., 1857.
Lee, Bourke. Death Valley Men. New York: Macmillan Co., 1932.
360
McKusick, Marshall. The Davenport Conspiracy. Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 1970.
Moore, Clarence B. Some Aboriginal Sites on Red River. Philadelphia,
Pa.: P. C. Stockhausen, 1912.
Ronda, James P. Lewis and Clark among the Indians. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2002.
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, Narrative Journal of Travels through the
Northwestern Regions of the United States. Albany, N.Y.: E. & E.
Hosford, 1821.
Scott, Joseph. Geographical Description of Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia, Pa.: Robert Cochran, 1806.
361
About the Author
Richard J. Dewhurst is the Emmy Award-winning writer of the HBO
feature documentary Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. A
graduate of NYU with degrees in journalism, film, and television, he
has written and edited for the History Channel, the Arts &
Entertainment Channel, PBS, Fox Television and Fox Films, ABC
News, TNT, Paramount Pictures, and the Miami Herald. He lives in
Vermont.
362
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The ancient giants who ruled America : the missing skeletons and the
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INDEX
All page numbers refer to the print edition of this title.
Page numbers in italics refer to figures.
1880 History of Indiana County, 229-30
Abbott, Lyle, 306-8
aborigines, 10
Adovasio, James M., 83, 86-87
Alabama, 101
Aldrich, Charles, 66
Alexander, Nancy, 231
alligator effigy mound, 85-86, 85
Alligewi people, 49-51, 50
altars, 161-62
Altmann, William, 41-43
Alton Evening Telegraph, 150-51
Alton Giant, 14
Altoona Mirror, 101
America B.C., 258-59
Anasazi, 47, 205
Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 3, 7, 7, 26, 115
Ancient Works at Newark map, 252
Anderson, Duane, 261
Anderson, James, 141
Annapolis Capital, 84
annealing, 204
Antoninus, 271-72
Appleton, Wisconsin, 147
Appleton Post-Crescent, 218, 308
Arizona Journal-Minor, 40
Arkansas Times, 188-89
367
arrows, 164
Art Daily, 311-14
Ashtabula County, Ohio, 23-28, 27, 57
Associated Press, 83, 101, 112-13, 182, 209, 231
Atwater, Caleb, 25
Australians, 10
axes, 163-64, 165, 171, 212
Aynesworth, K. D., 68
Bache, Rene, 144
Bakersfield Californian, 72
Baldwin, Donald, 100
Baltimore American, 17-18
battle evidence, 57
Bauval, Robert, 327-28
Beaufort’s Landing, 190, 240
Beetown, Rollo Jamison, 213
Bellinger, James, 260-61
Bemidji Daily Pioneer, 205
Big Harpeth River, 183-84
birds, 8
Blackett, Bar am, 263
Bliss, Wesley, 228
bog mummies, 291-99, 291, 294-95
bones. See also specific accounts
bones, historical accounts of, 15-43
Booda, Joseph, 67
Boraggina, John, 312, 315
Bork, Ken, 247
Borland, Hal, 102, 103-4
Brackenridge, Henri Marie, 137-38
brain surgery, 245
Breznikan, Anthony, 83
bricks, 164-65
Brittonn, Kenneth H., 105
Brown, Charles E., 209
Brown, M. J., 196, 198-200
Bryan, Andrew, 32
368
Buffalo Museum of Science, 15-16
Bureau of American Ethnology, 5, 182
Bureau of Land Management, 277
Burks, Ned, 90-93
Butler County farm, 183
Cadoo, 187-89
Cahokia site, 136-38, 137, 140-49, 151
California, 41-44, 42, 44, 72
Campbell, Kenneth, 90
Cantley, Patricia, 124-25
carbon dating. See dating
cardinal points, 326-27
Carlic, Steve, 78-79
Carpenter, Edmund, 228
Cartwright, Joseph, 261
Casper, James O., 105
Catalina Island, 3, 302-15, 304-7, 309
catastrophism, 8-9
Catlin, George, 300, 301
caves, 31-33, 34-36, 329-30
Cayuga Township, 71, 227
cement, 199
Cemetary of the Giants, 71
Centralia Ohio Enterprise, 109
Centurburg, Ohio, 21
Charleroi Mail, 19, 53-54
Charleston, West Virginia, 112-22
Charleston Daily Mail, 19, 114-24,
128, 130, 131-32, 222-23
Cheat River site, 179-82
Cherokees, 232
Chicago Tribune, 59-60, 94-98,
141-42, 256
Chickasawba, 189-90, 239-40
child-boarding skulls, 318
Chippewa Indians, 162
Cincinnati Commercial Gazette,
369
22-23, 58
Cincinnati Enquirer, 242-46
Cincinnati Society of Natural History,
242-46
Cincinnati Tablet, 244-45, 244
cities, 168
Cadoo mounds, 187-89
circular villages, 174-77
cliff dwellers, 196-200
estimates in Ohio, 171-73
Grand River Dam area, 192-96,
192-94
lost city in Ontario, 170-71
Poverty Point earthworks, 168-70 ,169
Wheatfield Mound, 173-74 ,174
Civil War, 4
Claudius II, 273
Clay County, Missouri, 37
cliff dwellers, 196-200
climate change, 104
Clovis spear points, 80, 81, 86, 92
Cockrell, Wilburn, 298-99
coins, 264-74, 272
Colton, Ray, 76-77, 192-96, 237-38
commerce by sea, 266-67
Conneaut, Giants of, 23-28, 27
Connor, Charles, 122-24
Cooper, John, 209
Cooper stone, 251
copper, 2-3, 170
culture in the Great Lakes, 205-9
headdress find, 212-15
Isle Royale, 201-3, 202
Leonard’s Point, 209-12, 211
site on Menominee River, 216-18
copper armor, 36, 57-58, 145
copper jewelry, 116, 123, 126
370
Crawford County, 178
Crecelius, Craig, 263
Cretan Empire, 9
crosses, 342
Cygnus, 342
Daily Globe, 205-9
Daily News-Record, 192-96, 237-38
Daily Northwestern, 54
Daily Telegraph, 170-71
dams, 167, 190, 213
dating, 1-2
Gypsum Cave, 103-4
Meadowcroft Rockshelter, 86-89
Mugu Point site, 104-5
New Mexico site, 102
Pee Dees, 80-82
thunderbird images, 89-94
Wisconsin sites, 98-100
Davenport, Jonas, 175
Davenport Stele, 255-61
Davis, Edwin H., 3, 26
Davis, H. E., 197
Deal, David, 249
Death Valley, 69-72
Death Valley Men, 70-71
Decalogue stone, 254
Delaware County, 221
Delawares, 175-76
Delaware Valley, 79-80
Deloria, Vine, 71, 72
De Marsche, Michael, 313-14
Deneyer, L. P., 64
Denmore War of 1774, 180-81
Des Moines Register, 257-61
Detroit Free Press, 71, 262
Devil’s Lake, 155
Dickson, Don, 61-63, 62
371
Dickson Mounds Museum, 61-63, 62
dinosaurs, 8, 29
Dog Creek, 185-86
Doran, Glen, 292
Doty Island, 155
double dentitions, 37, 66
Dragoo, Don W., 83
Drier, Roy Ward, 202, 206
duck decoys, 282, 286, 288
Dukes, Charley, 35
Durrett, Bob, 80-82
DuTemple, Octave Joseph, 202
Eagleonkie, 58
Eagle River, 203-4
Eau Claire Daily Free Press, 154-55
Eckerd, Jack, 291-92
Edwardsville Intelligencer, 148
effigy mounds, 149-67
elephant pipe, 94-98, 97
Elisburg Journal, 146
elk antler axes, 212
elongated skulls, 129-31 ,129
El Paso Herald, 197
embalming, 167
embossing, 204
engineering, 330-31
engraved tablets, 2-3
Eshel, Hanan, 255
Evans, John, 299
Evening Telegraph, 189-92
evolution, 8
Fafner, 52
Fasolt, 52
Fell, Barry, 256-58
Fenton, William N., 228-29
First Americans, The, 87
372
Fisher, George S., 54
flint, 115
Florence Morning News, 80-82
Florida bog mummies, 3, 291-99,
294-95
forest clearing, 177-82
Fort Hill, 26, 27
four sentinels, 117
Foust, Penny, 210
foxes, 163
Francis, John, 297
Frederick News Post, 144
Galveston Daily News, 102, 103-4,
142-43
Gardner, William, 91-93
Georgia, 28-31, 106-7
Gerson, Charles, 150
giants
context of, 14-15 ,15
historical accounts of bones, 15-43
as royalty, 2
See also specific topics
Gibson, John, 49
Glidden, Ralph, 302, 303, 306, 308,
310-11, 312-13
globe, round, 341 gold, 171
Gramly, Michael, 78-79
Grand River Dam, 190, 195
Grave Creek Mound, 114, 124-28,
126,127
grave goods, 221
Great Lakes, 203-9
Great Mortuary, 192
Griffin, James B., 206
Gunnerson, James H., 69
Gypsum Cave, 103-4
373
Halton, William L., 223
Hammond Times, 56-57
Haplogroup X, 293, 296
Harrington, Mark, 103-4
Harrington, M. R., 286
Hawk Eye, 59
Hawkins, David, 247
Haywood, John, 31-33, 184-85,
232-37, 264-72, 316-42
Heckewelder, John Gottlieb Ernestus,
48-49, 51, 53, 229-30
Henry, Alexander, 207
hieroglyphics, 70, 126, 242-47, 244,
256-63
Hinduism, 338-40, 341
Hinkson, Robert, 176
Historical Collections of Ohio, 25-26
Historical Record, 151
History of Miami County, Ohio, 1880, 75
Holder, Preston, 28, 29, 30
Holland, William Jacob, 88
Holslander, Adam, 16
holy stones, 246-47
Honeywell Mounds, 148
Hopewell Period, 77
Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca, 290
horned skulls, 131-33, 132, 133
Houck, John M., 231
House, Charles, 218
Howe, Henry, 25-26
Hrdlicka, Ales, 9, 30, 39-40
Hruska, Robert J., 216, 218
Hubbard, Samuel, 103
human sacrifice, 328-29
hunting horns, 319-20
Hurlbut, Irving, 261
Huston, Wyman, 256
374
Illiniwek Indians, 138
Illinois, 59-63, 256
Indiana, 57-58
Indiana County, 131
Indiana Evening Gazette, 83
instruments, 319
Iowa, 76-79, 259
Iowa City Press Citizen, 182
Iroquois, 48-49, 51-54
Isle Royale, 2, 201-3, 202
ivory beads, 126, 333-35
Jack and the Beanstalk, 12
Janesville Gazette, 145
Jantz, Richard L., 278
jasper, 92-93
Jennings County, Indiana, 36
Johnson, David M., 251
Johnson-Bradner stone, 251
Jones, Carl T., 223, 224
Jones, Samuel, 299
Jones, Walter B., 223
Jones, W. D., 231
Journal Tribune, 66
Kentucky, 71, 262
Kern County, California, 72
Kewanna Herald, 35-36
Keystone, 249-50, 249, 254
Kilgour, Dave, 55
Kincaid Site, 8
King, Nehemiah, 26
Kizzia, Glen L., 188
Knapp, Stephen A., 273
Knauth, Otto, 257-61
Koehler farm site, 182
Kohl, Johann Georg, 206-7
Krebs, C. E., 116
375
La Crosse Tribune, 64-65
Lahonton, Lake, 279-80
Lake County, Illinois, 60
land bridge theory, 9
Lappawinsa, 47
Lee, Bourke, 70-71
Lehman, Mark, 273
Lemmor, Victor F., 204-6
Lenni Lenape Indians, 46-51, 47-48,
50, 278-79
Leon, Joseph, 65
Leon, Matt, 65
Leonard’s Point, 209-12, 211
Lepper, Bradley, 254
LeTort, James, 175
Lewis and Clark among the Indians, 300-301
Library of Congress, 4
Life Among the Paiutes, 290
limestone slabs, 163-64
“Limitations to the Use of Some
Anthropologic Data, On,” 5-6
Lively, E. L., 130-31
Logan Grays, 58
Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 73-74
Los Angeles Times, 315
Loud, L. L., 286
Lovelock Cave, 280-90
Lovitt, Daniel, 256
Lundsted, James E., 209-11
mammoths, 81, 161
Mandans, 3, 275, 299-301
manifest destiny, 5, 10-11
marbles, 111-12
Martin, Paul, 102
Marx, Peter, 40
Maryland, 84
mastodon pipes, 97-98, 97
376
mastodons, 2, 81, 212-13
mathematics. 111
Maxwell, Hugh, 179-82
McCormick, Troy, 273
McCullough, John, 229-30
McDowell, George S., 242-46
McGlaughlin, James, 55-56
McKern, W. C., 209
McKusick, Marshall, 257, 259-60
McNett, Charles W., Jr., 79-80
Meadowcroft Rockshelter, 86-89, 87, 89
measurements, 337
Measuring Stone, 245
Memphis Daily Appeal, 239-40
Mengwe. See Iroquois
Meritaten, 129
mica mines, 2, 219-21
Michigan, 207, 219, 262
Middle Woodland, 85
Milanich, Jerald T., 292
Miller, Carl F., 101
Miller, Samuel, 60
Mills, William C., Ill
Milton, Charles, 37
Minnesota, 161, 167, 205, 207
Minnesota Evening Tribune, 68
Mississippi Valley, 130-31
Missouri, 37
Mong, Stuart H., 210
Monks Mound, 138-39, 139, 142, 148
Monroe County Mail, 38
Montgomery, Thomas, 25
Morehead, Warren K., 146, 147
Morning Herald, 18
Morning Sun News Herald, 77-78
Morris, Mount, 16
Morse, N. C., 66-67
377
Mound 23, 119
Mound 32, 120
Mound 72, 139
Mound Builders, 53-54, 60, 71-72,
76-77, 94-98, 108, 131-32
Cahokia site, 136-38, 137, 140-49, 151
eastern routes of, 227
effigy mounds, 149-67
Monks Mound, 138-39, 139, 142, 148
Mound 72, 139
Woodhenge, 142
See also Haywood, John; specific sites
Moundsville giants, 124-29, 126,127
Moundville mounds, 223-26
Mugu Point, 104-5
mummies, 3, 289
bog mummies, 291-99, 291, 294-95
in Lovelock, Nevada, 279-85, 281-
85, 287, 289
of Spirit Cave, 275-79
Munson, Cecil L., 158, 161
Murphy, James L., 247
Nash, Philleo, 158-59
Natchez Indians, 140
National Basketball Association, 14
National Sunday News, 187
Native American Graves Protection
and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA),
61, 63, 277-78, 296, 313
Natural and Aboriginal History of
Tennessee, The, 31, 232-37
Nesbit, Paul, 102
Nettleton, Harvey, 24
Nevada, 103-4, 279-80
Nevada News, 69-72
Newark mounds, 251-54, 252-53
New Hampshire, 17
378
Newhouse, John, 98-100
New North Wisconsin, 153-54
newspaper accounts. See specific
newspapers
New York Times, 21, 200
New York Tribune, 84-85, 171-73
Nodena Site, 9
Norris, P. W., 113-14, 123
North Carolina, 219-21, 230-31, 341
North Dakota, 68
Oakland Tribune, 41, 43, 58, 67, 108,
109, 111, 148-49, 153, 197-98,
215-16
Oconto, 98-100, 99, 210
Oerson, Charles, 150
Ohio, 21, 124-29, 246-47
engraved marbles, 112-13
estimate of mounds, 171-73
pearls of royal giants, 107-9
Roman coin find, 272-74, 272
Ohio Daily Gazette, 56
Ohio Democrat, 20-21
Ohio Morning Sun News Herald, 21
Ohio River, 54-56
Ohio Science Annual, 19-20
Oklahoma, 237-38
Okowala, 175
Old Copper Culture, 100, 210, 213,
216, 218. See also copper
Old People, 47, 205
Ontario, 170-71
Osceola site, 213
Oshkosh Daily, 219
Oshkosh Wisconsin Daily, 209-17
otters, 176
Owsley, Douglas W., 277-78
379
Paine, Myron, 254
panthers, 22-23, 161-62
Parsons, James, 179-80, 181
Paul, Helen Longyear, 207
Payne, John, 54-56
pearls, 107-9
Pee Dee Basin, 80-82, 82
Pennsylvania, 177-78
Perry, John P., 231
Petersburg, Kentucky, 54
Philadelphia Inquirer, 88
Phoenix Hilltop, 15-16
pictographs, 10-11, 103
Pigeon Creek Valley, Pennsylvania, 53-54
plantation cellar, 33-34
Pleiades, 327-28
Pocono Record Reporter, 79-80
Polynesians, 10
pools, sacred, 31
Porter, J. H., 178
Portsmouth Herald, 17
pottery, 81-82, 159-60
Poverty Point earthworks, 168-70 ,169
Powell, Barbara, 288
Powell, John Wesley, 5-6, 8, 10-11
“Powell Doctrine,” 12
Prehistoric Copper Mining in the Lake
Superior Region, 202
Press Courier, 104-5
Price, Jim, 183
Pulaski, Kentucky, 34-36
Quimby, George I., 205-6
racism, 10-11
Raettig, Terry, 210
Raleigh Herald, 179
Raleigh Register, 124-25, 152
Rattman, Joe, 79-80
380
red bricks, 164-65
red haired mummies. See mummies
refuse, 225
Review-Miner, 68
Richard III, King, 264-65
Ritzenthaler, Robert, 213
Rockingham, Virginia, 17
Roman coins, 2, 232, 265-74
Ronda, James P., 300-301
Ronde, Sieur de la, 207
Ross Lake site, 157-60
Royal, Bill, 295, 298
royal burials, 106-7, 108-11 ,110
Ruppe, R. J., 77
Russell, F. Bruce, 69-72
Russell Cave, 101
sacred pools, 31
Sahagun, Louis, 315
Salt Lake Tribune, 29-31
San Antonio Express, 38-39, 39, 128
Sanford, A. H., 64
San Nicolas Island, 104-5
Santa Rosa Island, 42
Sayre, Pennsylvania, 19, 131-32
Schumacher copper collection, 208-9
Schweitzer, Jerome, 223-26
Scoville, W. H., 146
Scythians, 316-26
sea commerce, 266-67
secret caves, 31
Serpent Mound, 7, 7, 151-52
Setzler, F. M., 30
Shanks, Hershel, 254
Sheboygan Press, 155
sheet copper, 208
shell apron, 30
Sheppard, William, 33, 34
381
Shetrone, H. S., 111-12
silver, 171
Sines, A. R., 122
Sioux Indians, 156
Si-Te-Cah, 280-90, 281-85, 287, 289
skulls, 129-33, 129,132,133
Smith, J. G., 104-5
Smith, Ray, 150
Smith, Robert R., 20
Smith’s Fork Cave, 329-30
Smithson, Jean, 4
Smithsonian Institution, 10-12
cliff dweller report, 198-200
copper mining in the Great Lakes, 203-4
cover-ups of, 3-5
Death Valley and, 69-72
disappearance of giant skeletons and, 63-66
Georgia giant search and, 106-7
Hopewell burial mounds and, 83
Illinois tablet find and, 256
Kern County and, 72-73
rancher refuses to sell to, 39-40
Russell Cave and, 101
South Charleston Mound and,
115-18
Sugar Run and, 228-29
Yadkin Valley and, 230-31
Solutrean projectile points, 86
Soto, Hernando de, 187-89
South Charleston Mound, 114-15
Sparta, Kentucky, 32
spear points, 80
Spirit Cave, 3, 275-79, 288
Spiro Mound, 187 ,193
Squier, Ephraim G., 3, 26
Squirrel Hill, 176
squirrels, 163
382
Standard Examiner, 69
standing stones, 331-32
Star Staff, 90-93
Stephenson, Clarence, 19
Stevens Point Daily Journal, 28
Stoddard Collection, 63-66
stone bowl, 254-55, 254
stone tablets, 256-61
stone walls, 128
sugar-loaf mounds, 163
Sugar Run, 228
Sulphur Springs, 322-24
sun calendars, 140
Sutton, Ernest, 125
Swanson, Jim, 291-92
Syracuse Daily Standard, 167
Syracuse Herald American, 15, 78-79
tablets, hieroglyphic, 242-47, 244,
256-63
Taylor, Erv, 277
Teedyuscung, 50
teeth, 160, 170-71
temples, 128
Ten Commandments, 247-48
Tennessee, 184-85, 232-37, 316-26.
See also Haywood, John
Tennessee giants, 31-32
Texas, 38-39, 39, 67-68
Thomas, Cyrus, 113-14
Thompson, David, 301
Thompson, William, 20
thunderbird images, 89-94, 90, 93,
162-63
Tippecanoe City, Ohio, 21
Titus, W. A., 155
Tomlinson, A. B., 125
Tomlinson, Joseph, 124
383
Toomer, J. B., 107
Totten, Norman, 273-74
trade, 215-16
treasures, 222-39
trees, 174-77
Trimm, James, 249
trumpets, 320-21
Tull, J. T., 286
Tyrone Daily Herald, 306-8
UNESCO, 169
uniform gradual history, 8
Verrey, Bob, 91-92
villages, 174-77
Wadlow, Robert Pershing, 14 ,15
Wagner, Richard, 52
Walcott, Charles Doolittle, 11-12
walls, 164
Warm Springs sinkhole, 297-98
watchtowers, 172-73
water tanks, 330-31
Wells, John H., 17
Welsh script, 263
West, Benjamin, 48
West, E. P., 37
West Virginia, 112-22
Wheatfield Mound, 173-74 ,174
Wheeler, Georgia, 276-77
Wheeler, Sydney, 276-77
White, A., 64
Whitfield, Jon, 263
Whittlesey, Charles, 203-4
Williams, Kitty, 189-90
Williams, Oliver, 268
Williamson, J. L., 130-31
384
Wilson, Alan, 263
Wilson Mound stones, 250-51
Windover Pond excavation, 292-97
Winona County, Minnesota, 65-66
Wisconsin, 63-66, 98-100, 143,
153-54, 155, 156-60, 161-62,
166, 207-8
Wisconsin State Journal, 98-100
Wisconsin Tribune, 158, 161
Wittry, Warren, 98, 100
Woodhenge, 140, 142
Wright, Aaron, 23-25
Wrigley, Philip K., 305, 313
Wrigley, William, Jr., 307
Wyrick, David, 247, 249, 254
Yadkin Valley, 230-31
Yinger, Nicholas, 18
385
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